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Paul Merrell

To beat ISIS, kick out US-led coalition | nsnbc international - 0 views

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war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Syria Iraq Iran Russia Lebanon ISIL sandbagging

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 May 15 - No Cached
  • It’s been a bad time for foes of ISIS. Islamic State scored a neat hat-trick by invading strategic Ramadi in Iraq’s mainly Sunni Anbar province, occupying Syria’s historic gem Palmyra, and taking over Al-Tanf, the last remaining border crossing with Iraq. The multinational, American-led ‘Coalition’ launched last August to thwart Islamic State’s (IS, formerly ISIS) march across Syria and Iraq…did nothing.
  • The Iraqis have shot back. Key MP Hakim al-Zamili blames Ramadi’s collapse on the US’s failure to provide “good equipment, weapons and aerial support” to troops. Deputy Prime Minister Saleh Mutlaq, himself a Sunni from Anbar Province, concluded that the Americans were coming up short in all areas. “The Coalition airstrikes are not enough to eliminate IS.” Furthermore, the US policy of recruiting Sunni tribes for the fight, he added, was “too late” – it is “important but not enough.” If ever there was an understatement, this is it. Washington’s long-stated objective of rallying together a vetted Sunni fighting force – or its equivalent in the form of a National Guard – has always served as a placeholder to avoid facing realities.
  • One thing we have learned from IS gains in small and large Sunni towns alike, is that the extremist group prides itself on sleeper cells and alliances inside of these areas. Sunni tribes and families, both, are divided on their support of IS. And the militants ensure that everyone else falls in line through a brutal campaign of inflicting fear and pain indiscriminately. So the likelihood of a significant, anti-IS, well-trained and equipped Sunni fighting force emerging anytime soon is just about nil. So too is the idea of a US-led Coalition air force that can cripple Islamic State. Washington has run fewer sorties over Syria and Iraq in the nine months since inception of its air campaign, than Israel ran in its entire three-week Gaza blitz in 2008-09. Where were the American bombers when Ramadi and Palmyra were being taken? And why does the US Air Force only seem to engage in earnest when their Kurdish allies are being threatened – as in Kobani (Ain al-Arab), Syria, and Erbil in Iraq?
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  • If actions speak louder than words, then Washington’s moves in the Mideast have been deafening. Forget talk of a ‘unified Iraq’ with a ‘strong central government’. And definitely forget loudly-proclaimed objectives of ‘training moderate forces’ to ‘fight off IS’ across the Jordanian and Turkish borders in Syria. That’s just talk. An objective look at US interests in the region paint an entirely different picture. The Americans seek to maintain absolute hegemony in the Mideast, even as they exit costly military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Their primary interests are 1) access to low cost oil and gas, 2) propping up Israel, and more recently, 3) undermining Russian (and Chinese) influence in the region. Clinging on to hegemony would be a whole lot easier without the presence of a powerful, independent Islamic Republic of Iran, which continues to throw a wrench in many of Washington’s regional projects. So hegemony is somewhat dependent on weakening Iran – and its supportive alliances.
  • But why ignore Sunni groups who are unreservedly opposed to IS? Aren’t they America’s natural constituents inside Iraq? The Takfiri extremist groups serve a purpose for Washington. IS has had the ability – where competing Sunni factions, with their ever-growing lists of demands from Baghdad, have not – to transform the US’ ‘buffer’ project into a physical reality. And Washington has not needed to expend blood, treasure or manpower to get the job done.
  • You only have to look at recent US actions in Iraq to see this unspoken plan in action. Washington’s most intensive airstrikes to date were when Kurdish Erbil and its environs came under threat by ISIS.Washington’s most intensive airstrikes to date were when Kurdish Erbil and its environs came under threat by ISIS. Congress has breached all international norms by ushering through legislation to directly arm Sunni and Kurdish militias and bypass the central government in Baghdad. And despite endless promises and commitments, the Americans have failed at every hurdle to train and equip the Iraqi Army and security forces to do anything useful. A weak, divided Iraq can never become a regional powerhouse allied with Iran and the Resistance Axis. Likewise a weak, divided Syria. But without US control over these central governments, the only way to achieve this is 1) through the creation of sectarian and ethnic strife that could carve out pro-US buffers inside the ‘Resistance states’ and/or 2) through the creation of a hostile ‘Sunni buffer’ to break this line from Iran to Palestine.
  • General Walid Sukariyya, a Sunni, pro-resistance member of Lebanon’s parliament, agrees. “ISIS will be better for the US and Israel than having a strong Iran, Iraq and Syria…If they succeed at this, the Sunni state in Iraq will split the resistance from Palestine.” While Washington has long sought to create a buffer in Iraq on the Syrian border, it has literally spent years trying – and failing – to find, then mold, representative Sunni Iraqi leaders who will comfortably toe a pro-American line. An example of this is the Anbar delegation US General John Allen handpicked last December for a DC tour, which excluded representatives of the two most prominent Sunni tribes fighting IS in Iraq – the Albu Alwan and Albu Nimr. A spokesman for the tribes, speaking to Al-Jarida newspaper, objected at the time: “We are fighting ISIL and getting slaughtered, while suffering from a shortage of weapons. In the meantime, others are going to Washington to get funds and will later be assigned as our leaders.”
  • With the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the US inadvertently extended Iran’s arc of influence in a direct geographic line to Palestine, leaving the Israeli colonial project vulnerable. Former President George W. Bush immediately took on the task of destroying this Resistance Axis by attempting to neuter Iranian allies Hezbollah, Syria and Hamas – and failed. The Arab Spring presented a fresh opportunity to regroup: the US and its Turkish and Persian Gulf allies swung into action to create conditions for regime-change in Syria. The goal? To break this geographic line from Iran – through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon – to Palestine. When regime-change failed, the goalpost moved to the next best plan: dividing Syria into several competing chunks, which would weaken the central state and create a pro-US ‘buffer’ along the border with Israel. Weakening the central government in Iraq by dividing the state along Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite lines has also been a priority for the Americans.
  • The DIA brief makes clear that the escalation of conflict in Syria will create further sectarianism and radicalization, which will increase the likelihood of an ‘Islamic State’ on the Syrian-Iraqi border, one that would likely be manned by the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). So what did Washington do when it received this information? It lied. Less than one month after the DIA report was published, US Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this about the Syrian opposition: “I just don’t agree that a majority are Al-Qaeda and the bad guys. That’s not true. There are about 70,000 to 100,000 oppositionists … Maybe 15 percent to 25 percent might be in one group or another who are what we would deem to be bad guys…There is a real moderate opposition that exists.” Using the fabricated storyline of ‘moderate rebels’ who need assistance to fight a ‘criminal Syrian regime’, the US government kept the Syrian conflict buzzing, knowing full well the outcome would mean the establishment of a Sunni extremist entity spanning the Syrian-Iraqi border…which could cripple, what the Americans call, “the strategic depth of the Shia expansion.”As US Council on Foreign Relations member and terrorism analyst Max Abrahms conceded on Twitter: “The August 5, 2012 DIA report confirms much of what Assad has been saying all along about his opponents both inside & outside Syria.”
  • Since last year, numerous Iraqi officials have complained about the US airdropping weapons to IS – whether deliberately or inadvertently remains disputed. Military sources, on the other hand, have made clear that the US-led Coalition ignores many of the Iraqi requests for air cover during ground operations. If the US isn’t willing to play ball in Iraq’s existential fight against IS, then why bother with the Americans at all? Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is viewed as a ‘weak’ head of state – a relatively pro-American official who will work diligently to keep a balance between US interests and those of Iraq’s powerful neighbor, Iran. But after the disastrous fall of Ramadi, and more bad news from inside Syria, Abadi has little choice but to mitigate these losses, and rapidly. The prime minister has now ordered the engagement of thousands of Hashd al-Shaabi (Shiite paramilitary groups, commonly known as the Popular Mobilization Forces) troops in the Anbar to wrest back control of Ramadi. And this – unusually – comes with the blessings of Anbar’s Sunni tribes who voted overwhelmingly to appeal to the Hashd for military assistance.
  • Joining the Hashd are a few thousand Sunni fighters, making this a politically palatable response. If the Ramadi operation goes well, this joint Sunni-Shiite effort (which also proved successful in Tikrit) could provide Iraq with a model to emulate far and wide. The recent losses in Syria and Iraq have galvanized IS’ opponents from Lebanon to Iran to Russia, with commitments pouring in for weapons, manpower and funds. If Ramadi is recovered, this grouping is unlikely to halt its march, and will make a push to the Syrian border through IS-heavy territory. There is good reason for this: the militants who took Ramadi came across the Syrian border – in full sight of US reconnaissance capabilities. A senior resistance state official told me earlier this year: “We will not allow the establishment of a big (extremist) demographic and geographic area between Syria and Iraq. We will work to push Syrian ISIS inside Syria and Iraqi ISIS inside Iraq.”
  • Right now, the key to pushing back Takfiri gains inside Syria’s eastern and northwestern theaters lies in the strengthening of the Iraqi military landscape. And an absolute priority will be in clearing the IS ‘buffer’ between the two states. Eighteen months ago, in an analysis about how to fight jihadist militants from the Levant to the Persian Gulf, I wrote that the solution for this battle will be found only within the region, specifically from within those states whose security is most compromised or under threat: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran. I argued that these four states would be forced to increase their military cooperation as the battles intensified, and that they would provide the only ‘boots on the ground’ in this fight. And they will. But air cover is a necessary component of successful offensive operations, even in situations of unconventional warfare. If the US and its flimsy Coalition are unable or unwilling to provide the required reconnaissance assistance and the desired aerial coverage, as guided by a central Iraqi military command, then Iraq should look elsewhere for help.
  • Iran and Russia come to mind – and we may yet get there. Iraq and Syria need to merge their military strategies more effectively – again, an area where the Iranians and Russians can provide valuable expertise. Both states have hit a dangerous wall in the past few weeks, and the motivation for immediate and decisive action is high today. Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah is coming into play increasingly as well – its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has recently promised that Hezbollah will no longer limit itself geographically, and will go where necessary to thwart this Takfiri enemy. The non-state actors that make up the jihadist and Takfiri core cannot be beaten by conventional armies, which is why local militias accustomed to asymmetric warfare are best suited for these battles. Criticizing the US’s utterly nonexistent response to the Ramadi debacle yesterday, Iran’s elite Quds Force Commander Qassem Suleimani points out: “Today, there is nobody in confrontation with [IS] except the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as nations who are next to Iran or supported by Iran.” The Iranians have become central figures in the fight against terror, and are right next door to it – as opposed to Washington, over 6,000 miles away.
  • If the US has any real commitment to the War on Terror, it should focus on non-combat priorities that are also essential to undermine extremism: 1) securing the Turkish and Jordanian borders to prevent any further infiltration of jihadists into Syria and Iraq, 2) sanctioning countries and individuals who fund and weaponize the Takfiris, most of whom are staunch US allies, now ironically part of the ‘Coalition’ to fight IS, and 3) sharing critical intelligence about jihadist movements with those countries engaged in the battle. It is time to cut these losses and bring some heavyweights into this battle against extremism. If the US-directed Coalition will not deliver airstrikes under the explicit command of sovereign states engaged at great risk in this fight, it may be time to clear Iraqi and Syrian airspace of coalition jets, and fill those skies with committed partners instead.
  • Related documentation: DIA Doc Syria and Iraq:_ Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 May 15
     
    Woh! Things definitely coming to an inflexion point in Syria and Iraq. This is a reprint from RT.com, the Russian video and web page news service. The hint of direct and overt military action by Russia and Iran should not be ignored. The U.S. is sandbagging for ISIL and al Nusiryah. 
Paul Merrell

Iran to send 4,000 troops to aid President Assad forces in Syria - Middle East - World ... - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...d-forces-in-syria-8660358.html

war & peace pro-war propaganda Syria Afghanistan WMD Iran Pipelinestan

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Washington’s decision to arm Syria’s Sunni Muslim rebels has plunged America into the great Sunni-Shia conflict of the Islamic Middle East, entering a struggle that now dwarfs the Arab revolutions which overthrew dictatorships across the region. For the first time, all of America’s ‘friends’ in the region are Sunni Muslims and all of its enemies are Shiites. Breaking all President Barack Obama’s rules of disengagement, the US is now fully engaged on the side of armed groups which include the most extreme Sunni Islamist movements in the Middle East.The Independent on Sunday has learned that a military decision has been taken in Iran – even before last week’s presidential election – to send a first contingent of 4,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards to Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad’s forces against the largely Sunni rebellion that has cost almost 100,000 lives in just over two years.  Iran is now fully committed to preserving Assad’s regime, according to pro-Iranian sources which have been deeply involved in the Islamic Republic’s security, even to the extent of proposing to open up a new ‘Syrian’ front on the Golan Heights against Israel.
  • In years to come, historians will ask how America – after its defeat in Iraq and its humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan scheduled for  2014 – could have so blithely aligned itself with one side in a titanic Islamic struggle stretching back to the seventh century death of the Prophet Mohamed. The profound effects of this great schism, between Sunnis who believe that the father of Mohamed’s wife was the new caliph of the Muslim world and Shias who regard his son in law Ali as his rightful successor – a seventh century battle swamped in blood around the present-day Iraqi cities of Najaf and Kerbala – continue across the region to this day. A 17th century Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbott, compared this Muslim conflict to that between “Papists and Protestants”.
  • Iraq, a largely Shiite nation which America ‘liberated’ from Saddam Hussein’s Sunni minority in the hope of balancing the Shiite power of Iran, has – against all US predictions – itself now largely fallen under Tehran’s influence and power.  Iraqi Shiites as well as Hizballah members, have both fought alongside Assad’s forces.
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  • Washington’s excuse for its new Middle East adventure – that it must arm Assad’s enemies because the Damascus regime has used sarin gas against them – convinces no-one in the Middle East.  Final proof of the use of gas by either side in Syria remains almost as nebulous as President George W. Bush’s claim that Saddam’s Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.For the real reason why America has thrown its military power behind Syria’s Sunni rebels is because those same rebels are now losing their war against Assad.  The Damascus regime’s victory this month in the central Syrian town of  Qusayr, at the cost of Hizballah lives as well as those of government forces, has thrown the Syrian revolution into turmoil, threatening to humiliate American and EU demands for Assad to abandon power.  Arab dictators are supposed to be deposed – unless they are the friendly kings or emirs of the Gulf – not to be sustained.  Yet Russia has given its total support to Assad, three times vetoing UN Security Council resolutions that might have allowed the West to intervene directly in the civil war.
  • In the Middle East, there is cynical disbelief at the American contention that it can distribute arms – almost certainly including anti-aircraft missiles – only to secular Sunni rebel forces in Syria represented by the so-called Free Syria Army.  The more powerful al-Nusrah Front, allied to al-Qaeda, dominates the battlefield on the rebel side
  • From now on, therefore, every suicide bombing in Damascus - every war crime committed by the rebels - will be regarded in the region as Washington’s responsibility. The very Sunni-Wahabi Islamists who killed thousands of Americans on 11th September, 2011 – who are America’s greatest enemies as well as Russia’s – are going to be proxy allies of the Obama administration.
  • Iran’s support for Damascus will grow rather than wither.  They point out that the Taliban recently sent a formal delegation for talks in Tehran and that America will need Iran’s help in withdrawing from Afghanistan.  The US, the Iranians say, will not be able to take its armour and equipment out of the country during its continuing war against the Taliban without Iran’s active assistance.  One of the sources claimed – not without some mirth -- that the French were forced to leave 50 tanks behind when they left because they did not have Tehran’s help.
  • Israel’s policies in the region have been knocked askew by the Arab revolutions, leaving its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, hopelessly adrift amid the historic changes.Only once over the past two years has Israel fully condemned atrocities committed by the Assad regime, and while it has given medical help to wounded rebels on the Israeli-Syrian border, it fears an Islamist caliphate in Damascus far more than a continuation of Assad’s rule.  One former Israel intelligence commander recently described Assad as “Israel’s man in Damascus”. 
  • Another of the region’s supreme ironies is that Hamas, supposedly the ‘super-terrorists’ of Gaza, have abandoned Damascus and now support the Gulf Arabs’ desire to crush Assad.  Syrian government forces claim that Hamas has even trained Syrian rebels in the manufacture and use of home-made rockets.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Jun 13
     
    Astute analysis of the Mideast situation, saving the lack of mention that to the U.S., U.K., and France, it's all about competing natural gas pipeline projects. Iran sending in its Revolutionary Guard troops to support the Syrian Assad government in response to Obama's decision to provide arms to the "rebels" under the pretext of Syrian use of chemical weapons. No surprise there, except to the Chief Idiot in the White House, who apparently has not yet figured out that every U.S. escalation is countered with a larger escalation from Syria's supporters and that the "rebels" already were being supplied with arms by other nations.   And using Syria to spark a regional Sunni v. Shia war is beyond idiotic, a formula for World War III.   Note the author's skepticism about U.S. claims of WMD use. 
Paul Merrell

Pentagon plans to arm Sunni fighters vs. ISIS | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...vide-weapons-to-sunni-fighters

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Iraq weapons-shipments arming-Sunnis

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 May 15 - No Cached
  • The Pentagon has plans to provide military equipment to Sunni tribal fighters, a Defense spokeswoman said on Wednesday, a shift from its current policy to provide the equipment only through the central government in Baghdad.The new plans come after Sunni tribal fighters faced an embarrassing defeat by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) last week in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province. Fighters complained that they had not received payment or any U.S. military equipment from the central government.
  • ADVERTISEMENT"The Sunni Tribal units affiliated with the Iraqi government are currently trained by the [Iraqi Security Forces] and equipped by the [Government of Iraq] but there are plans to provide [Iraq Train and Equip Fund] equipment to tribal fighters in the future, with the approval and coordination of the GoI," said Pentagon spokeswoman Navy Cmdr. Elissa Smith in a statement. Pentagon officials also confirmed the Sunni tribal fighters in Ramadi had not received any training from the U.S.-led train and equip program, a linchpin of the Obama administration's strategy to allow Iraqi forces to take on ISIS fighters on the ground and supplant the need for U.S. troops. And although Congress approved a $1.6 billion Iraq Train and Equip Fund in December to provide weapons and equipment to the Iraqi Security Forces, including Sunni tribal fighters, it was unclear whether any of it had made it to Sunni forces who fought in Ramadi.
  • The U.S. has left the tasks of training and equipping Sunni forces up to the Shiite-dominated central government, in an effort to bolster the central government and get the two rival ethnic groups to overcome sectarian mistrust and tension. However, administration officials in recent days have expressed that training and weapons to the Sunni fighters need to move faster.Lawmakers have also called for the administration to equip Sunni fighters directly, and have threatened to withhold assistance from Baghdad unless it is distributed appropriately among the different minority groups in Iraq. The U.S. has already distributed $400 million of the $1.6 billion fund, and another $566 million is scheduled to be released soon. A total of $1.24 billion is slated to go to Iraqi security forces, $354 million is slated to go to Kurdish peshmerga forces, and $24 million is slated to go to Sunni tribal fighters. 
  • Paul Merrell on 28 May 15
     
    There goes the U.S. commitment to maintaining Iraq as a unified nation. Now the three-state solution is plainly above ground, just as Israeli leaders have planned for years. 
Paul Merrell

The Engineered Destruction and Political Fragmentation of Iraq. Towards the Creation of... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5386998

war & peace Iraq ISIL Mosul U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • The Capture of Mosul:  US-NATO Covert Support to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) Something unusual occurred in Mosul which cannot be explained in strictly military terms. On June 10, the insurgent forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) captured Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, with a population of close to 1.5 million people.  While these developments were “unexpected” according to the Obama administration, they were known to the Pentagon and US intelligence, which were not only providing weapons, logistics and financial support to the ISIS rebels, they were also coordinating, behind the scenes, the ISIS attack on the city of Mosul. While ISIS is a well equipped and disciplined rebel army when compared to other Al Qaeda affiliated formations, the capture of Mosul, did not hinge upon ISIS’s military capabilities. Quite the opposite: Iraqi forces which outnumbered the rebels by far, equipped with advanced weapons systems could have easily repelled the ISIS rebels. There were 30,000 government forces in Mosul as opposed to 1000 ISIS rebels, according to reports. The Iraqi army chose not to intervene. The media reports explained without evidence that the decision of the Iraqi armed forces not to intervene was spontaneous characterized by mass defections.
  • Iraqi officials told the Guardian that two divisions of Iraqi soldiers – roughly 30,000 men – simply turned and ran in the face of the assault by an insurgent force of just 800 fighters. Isis extremists roamed freely on Wednesday through the streets of Mosul, openly surprised at the ease with which they took Iraq’s second largest city after three days of sporadic fighting. (Guardian, June 12, 2014, emphasis added) The reports point to the fact that Iraqi military commanders were sympathetic with the Sunni led ISIS insurgency: Speaking from the Kurdish city of Erbil, the defectors accused their officers of cowardice and betrayal, saying generals in Mosul “handed over” the city over to Sunni insurgents, with whom they shared sectarian and historical ties. (Daily Telegraph,  13 June 2014) What is important to understand, is that both sides, namely the regular Iraqi forces and the ISIS rebel army are supported by US-NATO. There were US military advisers and special forces including operatives from private military companies on location in Mosul working with Iraq’s regular armed forces. In turn, there are Western special forces or mercenaries within ISIS (acting on contract to the CIA or the Pentagon) who are in liaison with US-NATO (e.g. through satellite phones).
  • Under these circumstances, with US intelligence amply involved, there would have been routine communication, coordination, logistics and exchange of intelligence between a US-NATO military and intelligence command center, US-NATO military advisers forces or private military contractors on the ground assigned to the Iraqi Army and Western special forces attached to the ISIS brigades. These Western special forces operating covertly within the ISIS could have been dispatched by a private security company on contract to US-NATO.
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  • In this regard, the capture of Mosul appears to have been a carefully engineered operation, planned well in advance. With the exception of a few skirmishes, no fighting took place. Entire divisions of the Iraqi National Army –trained by the US military with advanced weapons systems at their disposal– could have easily repelled the ISIS rebels. Reports suggest that they were ordered by their commanders not to intervene. According to witnesses, “Not a single shot was fired”. The forces that had been in Mosul have fled — some of which abandoned their uniforms as well as their posts as the ISIS forces swarmed into the city. Fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an al-Qaeda offshoot, overran the entire western bank of the city overnight after Iraqi soldiers and police apparently fled their posts, in some instances discarding their uniforms as they sought to escape the advance of the militants. http://hotair.com/archives/2014/06/10/mosul-falls-to-al-qaeda-as-us-trained-security-forces-flee/
  • A contingent of one thousand ISIS rebels take over a city of more than one million? Without prior knowledge that the US controlled Iraqi Army (30,000 strong) would not intervene, the Mosul operation would have fallen flat, the rebels would have been decimated. Who was behind the decision to let the ISIS terrorists take control of Mosul? Had the senior Iraqi commanders been instructed by their Western military advisers to hand over the city to the ISIS terrorists? Were they co-opted?
  • The formation of the caliphate may be the first step towards a broader conflict in the Middle East, bearing in mind that Iran is supportive of the Al Maliki government and the US ploy may indeed be to encourage the intervention of Iran. The proposed redivision of Iraq is broadly modeled on that of the Federation of Yugoslavia which was split up into seven “independent states” (Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia (FYRM), Slovenia, Montenegro, Kosovo). According to Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, the re division of Iraq into three separate states is part of a broader process of redrawing the Map of the Middle East.
  • US forces could have intervened. They had been instructed to let it happen. It was part of a carefully planned agenda to facilitate the advance of the ISIS rebel forces and the installation of the ISIS caliphate. The whole operation appears to have been carefully staged.
  • In Mosul, government buildings, police stations, schools, hospitals, etc are formally now under the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In turn, ISIS has taken control of military hardware including helicopters and tanks which were abandoned by the Iraqi armed forces. What is unfolding is the installation of a US sponsored Islamist ISIS caliphate alongside the rapid demise of the Baghdad government. Meanwhile, the Northern Kurdistan region has de facto declared its independence from Baghdad. Kurdish peshmerga rebel forces (which are supported by Israel) have taken control of the cities of Arbil and Kirkuk. (See map above) Concluding Remarks There were no Al Qaeda rebels in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion. Moreover, Al Qaeda was non-existent in Syria until the outset of the US-NATO-Israeli supported insurgency in March 2011. The ISIS is not an independent entity. It is a creation of US intelligence. It is a US intelligence asset, an instrument of non-conventional warfare.
  • Was the handing over of Mosul to ISIS part of a US intelligence agenda? Were the Iraqi military commanders manipulated or paid off into allowing the city to fall into the hands of the ISIS rebels without “a single shot being fired”. Shiite General Mehdi Sabih al-Gharawi who was in charge of the Mosul Army divisions “had left the city”. Al Gharawi had worked hand in glove with the US military. He took over the command of Mosul in September 2011, from US Col Scott McKean. Had he been co-opted, instructed by his US counterparts to abandon his command?
  • The ultimate objective of this ongoing US-NATO engineered conflict opposing Maliki government forces to the ISIS insurgency is to destroy and destabilize Iraq as a Nation State. It is part of an intelligence operation, an engineered process of  transforming countries into territories. The break up of Iraq along sectarian lines is a longstanding policy of the US and its allies. The ISIS is a caliphate project of creating a Sunni Islamist state. It is not a project of the Sunni population of Iraq which historically has been committed to a secular system of government. The caliphate project is a US design. The advances of ISIS forces is intended to garnish broad support within the Sunni population directed against the Al Maliki government The division of Iraq along sectarian-ethnic lines has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for more than 10 years.
  • The above map was prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. It was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, Peters is a retired colonel of the U.S. National War Academy. (Map Copyright Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006). Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO’s Defense College for senior military officers”. (See Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a “New Middle East” By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Global Research, November 2006)
  • The Western media in chorus have described the unfolding conflict in Iraq as a “civil war” opposing the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham against the Armed forces of the Al-Maliki government. (Also referred to as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)) The conflict is casually described as “sectarian warfare” between Radical Sunni and Shia without addressing “who is behind the various factions”.  What is at stake is a carefully staged US military-intelligence agenda. Known and documented, Al Qaeda affiliated entities have been used by US-NATO in numerous conflicts as “intelligence assets” since the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war. In Syria, the Al Nusrah and ISIS rebels are the foot-soldiers of the Western military alliance, which oversees and controls the recruitment and training of paramilitary forces.
  • The Al Qaeda affiliated Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) re-emerged in April 2013 with a different name and acronym, commonly referred to as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The formation of a terrorist entity encompassing both Iraq and Syria was part of a US intelligence agenda. It responded to geopolitical objectives. It also coincided with the advances of Syrian government forces against the US sponsored insurgency in Syria and the failures of both the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and its various “opposition” terror brigades. The decision was taken by Washington to channel its support (covertly) in favor of a terrorist entity which operates in both Syria and Iraq and which has logistical bases in both countries. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham’s Sunni caliphate project coincides with a longstanding US agenda to carve up both Iraq and Syria into three separate territories: A Sunni Islamist Caliphate, an Arab Shia Republic, and a Republic of Kurdistan.
  • Whereas the (US proxy) government in Baghdad purchases advanced weapons systems from the US including F16 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham –which is fighting Iraqi government forces– is supported covertly by Western intelligence. The objective is to engineer a civil war in Iraq, in which both sides are controlled indirectly by US-NATO. The scenario is to arm and equip them, on both sides, finance them with advanced weapons systems and then “let them fight”.
  • The Islamic caliphate is supported covertly by the CIA in liaison with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkish intelligence. Israel is also involved in channeling support to both Al Qaeda rebels in Syria (out of the Golan Heights) as well to the Kurdish separatist movement in Syria and Iraq.
  • First published by GR on June 14, 2014.  President Barack Obama has initiated a series of US bombing raids in Iraq allegedly directed towards the rebel army of the Islamic State (IS). The Islamic State terrorists are portrayed as an enemy of America and the Western world. Amply documented, the Islamic State is a creation of Western intelligence, supported by the CIA and Israel’s Mossad and financed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. We are dealing with a diabolical military agenda whereby the United States is targeting a rebel army which is directly funded by the US and its allies. The incursion into Iraq of the Islamic State rebels in late June was part of a carefully planned intelligence operation. The rebels of the Islamic state, formerly known as the ISIS, were covertly supported by US-NATO-Israel  to wage a terrorist insurgency against the Syrian government of Bashar Al Assad.  The atrocities committed in Iraq are similar to those committed in Syria. The sponsors of IS including Barack Obama have blood on their hands.
  • The killings of innocent civilians by the Islamic state terrorists create a pretext and the justification for US military intervention on humanitarian grounds. Lest we forget, the rebels who committed these atrocities and who are a target of US military action are supported by the United States. The bombing raids ordered by Obama are not intended to eliminate the terrorists. Quite the opposite, the US is targeting the civilian population as well as the Iraqi resistance movement. The endgame is to destabilize Iraq as a nation state and trigger its partition into three separate entities.
  • Paul Merrell on 15 Jun 14
     
    The destabilization and fragmentation of Israel's neighboring nations has indeed been on the Zionist/Neocon drawing board for a very long time. http://goo.gl/Z1gdoA In the Mideast, it's important to remember that there are no significant Islamist forces that are not under the control of the U.S. or its allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The Iraqi Army's withdrawal of the two divisions from the defense of Mosul is indeed curious. In that regard, Col. Peters' map of a future Mideast is almost certainly more than a coincidence. 
Paul Merrell

M of A - U.S. Again Gunning For "Regime Change" In Iraq - 0 views

www.moonofalabama.org/...for-regime-change-in-iraq.html

war & peace Iraq U.S.-foreign-policy regime change

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Three days ago we said: The U.S. has conditioned any involvement on the Iraqi government side on a change in its structure towards some "unity government" that would include representatives of the rebellious Sunni strains. Prime Minister Maliki, who received good results in the recent elections, will see no reason to go for that. As expected Maliki declined to follow orders out of Washington DC and he is right to do so. Isn't Iraq supposed to be a sovereign state? No says Washington. It is us who are choosing a new Iraqi prime minister: Over the past two days the American ambassador, Robert S. Beecroft, along with Brett McGurk, the senior State Department official on Iraq and Iran, have met with Usama Nujaifi, the leader of the largest Sunni contingent, United For Reform, and with Ahmad Chalabi, one of the several potential Shiite candidates for prime minister, according to people close to each of those factions, as well as other political figures. “Brett and the ambassador met with Mr. Nujaifi yesterday and they were open about this, they do not want Maliki to stay,” Nabil al-Khashab, the senior political adviser to Mr. Nujaifi, said Thursday.
  • This move lets arouse suspicions that the recent insurgency against the Iraqi state, with ISIS takfiris in the front line, did not just by chance started after Maliki's party, the State of Law Coalition, won in the parliamentary elections a few weeks ago. It had been decided that he had to go. When the elections confirmed him, other methods had to be introduced. Thus the insurgency started and is now used as a pretext for "regime change". The U.S. media and policies again fall for the "big bad man" cliche portraying Nouri al-Maliki (Arabic for Ngo Dinh Diem) as the only person that stands in the way of Iraq as a "liberal democracy". That is of course nonsense. Maliki is not the problem in Iraq: The most significant factor behind Iraq’s problems has been the inability of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs and its Sunni neighbors to come to terms with a government in which the Shias, by virtue of their considerable majority in Iraq’s population, hold the leading role. This inability was displayed early on, when Iraq’s Sunnis refused to take part in Iraq’s first parliamentary elections, and resorted to insurgency almost immediately after the US invasion and fall of Saddam Hussein. All along, the goal of Iraqi Sunnis has been to prove that the Shias are not capable of governing Iraq. Indeed, Iraq’s Sunni deputy prime minister, Osama al Najafi, recently verbalized this view. The Sunnis see political leadership and governance to be their birthright and resent the Shia interlopers.
  • The U.S., with strong support from its GCC allies who finance the insurgency, now seems to again lean towards the Sunni minority side in Iraq and wants to subvert the ruling of a Shia majority and its candidate. Maliki doesn't follow Washington orders, is somewhat friendly with Iran and even wins elections. Such man can not be let standing. So the program is again "regime change" in Iraq, now with the help of Jihadists proxies, even after the recent catastrophic "successes" in similar endeavors in Libya, Egypt and Ukraine and the failure in Syria. Phil Greaves seems thereby right when he characterizes the insurgency and ISIS as a expression of Washington's imperialism: The ISIS-led insurgency currently gripping the western and northern regions of Iraq is but a continuation of the imperialist-sponsored insurgency in neighboring Syria. The state actors responsible for arming and funding said insurgency hold the same principal objectives in Iraq as those pursued in Syria for the last three years, namely: the destruction of state sovereignty; weakening the allies of an independent Iran; the permanent division of Iraq and Syria along sectarian lines establishing antagonistic “mini-states” incapable of forming a unified front against US/Israeli imperial domination. The best thing Maliki could now do is to shut down the U.S. embassy and request support from Russia, China and Iran. South Iraq is producing lots of oil and neither money nor the number of potential recruits for a big long fight are his problem. His problem is the insurgency and the states, including the United States, behind it. The fight would be long and Iraq would still likely be parted but the likely outcome would at least guarantee that the will of the majority constituency can not be ignored by outside actors.
Paul Merrell

Iraq Looking for an "Independent" Sunni Defense Minister « LobeLog.com - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/pendent-sunni-defense-minister

war & peace Iraq Kurds Shia Sunnis Massoum

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Iraqi President Fouad Massoum said that the government was looking for an independent Sunni Muslim to fill the post of defense minister in an effort to improve chances of reunifying the country and defeating the group that calls itself the Islamic State (IS). Massoum, in his first extended comments to a US audience since his recent selection as president of Iraq, also said Sept. 26 that Iraqi Kurds—while they might still hold a referendum on independence—would not secede from Iraq at a time of such major peril.
  • “Today there is no possibility to announce such a state,” Massoum, a Kurd and former prime minister of the Kurdish region, told a packed room at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “Forming a Kurdish state is a project, and a project like that has to take into account” the views of regional and other countries and the extraordinary circumstances of the current terrorist menace to Iraq. Kurdish threats to hold a referendum and declare independence were widely seen as leverage to force the resignation of former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Maliki—also under pressure from President Barack Obama’s administration, Iraqi Sunnis and Iran—stepped down to allow a less polarizing member of his Shia Dawa party, Haider al-Abadi, to take the top job.
  • Abadi, however, has been unable so far to get parliament to approve his choices for the sensitive posts of defense and interior ministers. Queried about this, Massoum said, “There seems to be some understanding that the minister of defense should be Sunni and there is a search for an independent Sunni.” As for interior minister, Massoum said, they were looking for an “independent Shia” to take the post. For the time being, Abadi is holding the portfolios, but unlike his predecessor, who retained them, has clearly stated that he does not want to assume those responsibilities for long. Massoum said a decision was likely after the coming Muslim holiday, the Eid al-Adha.
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  • The Iraqi president also said there was progress on a new arrangement for sharing Iraq’s oil revenues, a major source of internal grievances under Maliki. A decision has been made that each of the regions will have representation on a higher oil and gas council, Massoum said. He also expressed confidence in Iraq’s new oil minister, Adel Abdel-Mahdi. Asked whether Iraq would split into three countries—as Vice President Joe  Biden once recommended—Massoum said there might be an eventual move toward a more confederal system but “partitioning Iraq … into three independent states is a bit far-fetched, especially in the current situation.”
  • Massoum began his remarks with a fascinating explanation of how IS, which he called ISIS, for the Islamic State of Iraq and as-Shams, came into being. He said the group began “as a marriage” between nationalist military officers and religious extremists that took place when they were in prison together while the US still occupied Iraq. The notion of combining Iraq with the Levant—made up of Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan—is actually an old Arab nationalist concept, Massoum said. As for the religious aspects of the movement, Massoum traced that to the so-called Hashishin—users of hashish. This Shia group, formed in the late 11th century, challenged the then-Sunni rulers of the day, used suicide attacks and were said to be under the influence of drugs. The English word “assassin” derives from the term. “Many times these terrorist practices [were used] in the name of a religion or a sect,” Massoum said.
  • Massoum attributed the collapse of the Iraqi army at Mosul to poor leadership, corruption and decades of setbacks starting with Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran in 1980. This was followed a decade later by his invasion of Kuwait and subsequent refusal to cooperate with the international community. “These blows all had an impact on the psychology of the commanders and soldiers,” Massoum said. Iraqi armed forces have gone “from failure to failure.” The president confirmed that under the new Iraqi government, each governorate will have its own national guard made up of local people. This concept, which may be partly funded by the Saudis and other rich Gulf Arabs, is an attempt to replicate the success of the so-called sons of Iraq by motivating Sunni tribesmen to confront IS as they previously did with al-Qaeda in Iraq.
  • Asked what would happen to Shia militias—which have committed abuses against Sunnis and helped alienate that population from Baghdad—Massoum said the militias would eventually have to be shut down but only after the IS threat had been eliminated. He did not indicate how long that might take. Massoum was also asked about reported IS plots against US and French subway systems. Abadi earlier this week made reference to such plots, but US officials said they had no such intelligence. Iraqi officials accompanying Massoum, who spoke on condition that they not be identified, said Abadi had been misinterpreted and was referring only to the types of attacks IS might mount in the West.
  • Asked about Turkey, which has been reticent about aiding Iraq against IS, Massoum, who met at the UN this week with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said he expected more help now that 49 Turkish hostages in Mosul have been freed.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Sep 14
     
    Enlightening. My insight into present-day politics within Iraq just improved noticeably.
Paul Merrell

The impossible war: Isis 'cannot be beaten' as long as there is civil war in Syria - Mi... - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...ivil-war-in-syria-9727847.html

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy ISIL Syria Iraq Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • A letter printed at the bottom of this article was emailed by a friend soon after her neighbourhood in Mosul was hit by Iraqi airforce bombers. This was some hours before President Barack Obama explained his plan to weaken and ultimately destroy Isis, which calls itself Islamic State, by a series of measures including air attacks. The letter illustrates graphically one of the most important reasons why American air power may be less effective than many imagine.
  • ‘The Jihadis Return: Isis and the New Sunni Uprising’ by Patrick Cockburn, published by OR Books, is available at orbooks.com
  • Letter from Mosul: Why Isis is seen as the lsser of two evilsThe bombardment was carried out by the government. The air strikes focused on wholly civilian neighbourhoods. Maybe they wanted to target two Isis bases. But neither round of bombardment found its target. One target is a house connected to a church where Isis men live. It is next to the neighbourhood generator and about 200-300 metres from our home.The bombing hurt civilians only and demolished the generator. Now we don’t have any electricity since yesterday night. Now I am writing from a device in my sister’s house, which is empty.
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  • The government bombardment did not hit any of the Isis men. Now I have just heard from a relative who visited us to check on us after that terrible night. He says that because of this bombardment, youngsters are joining Isis in tens if not in hundreds because this increases hatred towards the government, which doesn’t care about us as Sunnis being killed and targeted.Government forces went to Amerli, a Shia village surrounded by tens of Sunni villages, though Amerli was never taken by Isis. The government militias attacked the surrounding Sunni villages, killing hundreds, with help from the American air strikes.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Sep 14
     
    The big question is whether ISIL is: [i] unintended blowback from previous arming of Sunni militants in Syria; or [ii] a ploy by the U.S. and Saudis to create grounds for U.S. military intervention in aid of ISIL to destroy the Syrian government and restore central and southern Iraq to Sunni control. All signs other than official U.S. pronouncements so far are pointing toward the latter. 
Paul Merrell

Déjà vu? Saudi clerics declare jihad on Russia | Brookings Institution - 0 views

www.brookings.edu/...cs-declare-jihad-russia-riedel

war & peace Russia Saudi-clerics jihad Sunni-Shia-War

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • In a statement harkening back to the war against the Soviet Union 36 years ago in Afghanistan, fifty-five Saudi Wahhabi clerics have signed a call for jihad against Russia for its military intervention in Syria. America and the West are accused of colluding with Moscow by only pretending to support the Syrian opposition since 2011. The statement is not an official document of the Kingdom, but it undoubtedly has much support in the House of Saud. The statement calls on all Sunni Muslims to unite to defeat "tsars and Caesars" who have backed the "Christian regime" and its Alawi partners in Damascus. Russians, the "fanatical people of the cross," are warned to remember how the Afghan mujaheddin destroyed the Soviet Union in 1989 in Afghanistan. The Russian state will suffer the same fate. Iran is also targeted for the jihad. The Persians and their Iraqi Shiite allies—as well as Hezbollah—have aligned themselves with the Russian Orthodox Christians against Islam. All of the Safavids (the Persian dynasty that adopted Shiism as the state religion) are legitimate targets for the holy war, the statement says.
  • So too are America and the West for promising to help the Syrian people but never delivering anti-aircraft missiles or other sophisticated weapons. Washington feigns opposition to Moscow, the statement alleges, but is really part of the plot against Sunnis. The signatories remind their readers that President George Bush waged a “crusade” in Iraq that installed a Shiite government and accuse Washington and Moscow of being engaged in "evil scheming." The Sunni-Shiite war has been escalating for the last few decades but it is now boiling at a fever pitch. The signatories include some clerics with a past history of supporting al-Qaida. None appear to be members of the Al Sheikh family, the descendants of Muhammad Ibn Abd Al Wahhab (the founder of Wahhabism and the most prominent clerical family in Saudi Arabia with the closest ties to the royals). Nonetheless, the statement reflects the views of many Saudis about Russia's intervention to back up Bashar Assad and U.S. failure to depose him. The statement reflects the growing intensification of sectarian extremism in the region. The Sunni-Shiite war has been escalating for the last few decades but it is now boiling at a fever pitch. Editors' note: Since the original publication of the post, we have added a link (Arabic) to the letter signed by 55 Saudi clerics.
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Oct 15
     
    The Saudi govenment has been making lots of threat about increasing aid and weapons for Sunni fighters in Syria to fight Russia. I wonder which side of that issue the CIA is on? (Note that U.S. DoD  Secretary Ash Carter has been publicly warning Russia that its intervention in Syria will povoke Islamic militants across the region and into Russia itself.) The Saudis have also been threatening to arm jihadis in Syria MANPAD should-fired anti-aircraft missiles that are capable of taking down Russian and Syrian fighters that would have to be provided by U.S. manufacturers. I don't know whether the Saudis already have more than enough for the nation's military defense forces. 
Paul Merrell

U.S. plans to arm Iraq's Anbar tribesmen - Al Arabiya News - 0 views

english.alarabiya.net/...m-Iraq-s-Anbar-tribesmen-.html

war & peace Iraq Anbar arming-Sunnis U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • While Iraq’s premier ordered on Saturday more air support for security forces and allied tribesmen fighting jihadists, Washington plans to buy arms for Sunni tribal members  in the western province of Anbar including AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades and mortar rounds. The United States planning to arm the Sunni tribesmen in Anbar comes after Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants killed 25 members of the anti-jihadist Albunimr tribe. The decision is to help bolster the battle against ISIS militants in the Sunni-stronghold province, Reuters reported Saturday citing a Pentagon document being prepared for the Congress.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Nov 14
     
    Great idea! Only small parts of Anbar province are not under ISIL control. So will our illustrious generals require ISIL to steal and buy the weapons from proxies, or will they just let the ISIL mercenaries line up themselves? Are we supposed to believe such thin cover stories? 
Paul Merrell

ISIS: Made in Washington, Riyadh - and Tel Aviv by Justin Raimondo -- Antiwar.com - 0 views

original.antiwar.com/...washington-riyadh-and-tel-aviv

war & peace ISIL U.S.-foreign-policy who-is-ISIL Saudis Israel U.S. Benghazi must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is being touted as the newest "threat" to the American homeland: hysterics have pointed to Chicago as the locus of their interest, and we are told by everyone from the President on down that if we don’t attack them – i.e. go back into Iraq (and even venture into Syria) to root them out – they’ll soon show up on American shores.
  • If we step back from the hysteria generated by the beheading of US journalist James Foley, what’s clear is that this new bogeyman is the creation of the United States and its allies in the region. ISIS didn’t just arise out of the earth like some Islamist variation on the fabled Myrmidons: they needed money, weapons, logistics, propaganda facilities, and international connections to reach the relatively high level of organization and lethality they seem to have achieved in such a short period of time. Where did they get these assets? None of this is any secret: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the rest of the oil-rich Gulf states have been backing them all the way. Prince Bandar al-Sultan, until recently the head of the Kingdom’s intelligence agency – and still the chief of its National Security Council – has been among their biggest backers. Qatar and the Gulf states have also been generous in their support for the Syrian jihadists who were too radical for the US to openly back. Although pressure from Washington – only recently exerted – has reportedly forced them to cut off the aid, ISIS is now an accomplished fact – and how can anyone say that support has entirely evaporated instead of merely going underground?
  • Washington’s responsibility for the success of ISIS is less direct, but no less damning. The US was in a de facto alliance with the groups that merged to form ISIS ever since President Barack Obama declared Syria’s Bashar al-Assad "must go" – and Washington started funding Syrian rebel groups whose composition and leadership kept changing. By funding the Free Syrian Army (FSA), our "vetted" Syrian Islamists, this administration has actively worked to defeat the only forces capable of rooting out ISIS from its Syrian nest – Assad’s Ba’athist government. Millions of dollars in overt aid – and who knows how much covertly? – were pumped into the FSA. How much of that seeped into the coffers of ISIS when constantly forming and re-forming chameleon-like rebel groups defected from the FSA? These defectors didn’t just go away: they joined up with more radical – and militarily effective – Islamist militias, some of which undoubtedly found their way to ISIS. How many ISIS cadres who started out in the FSA were trained and equipped by American "advisors" in neighboring Jordan? We’ll never know the exact answer to that question, but the number is very likely not zero – and this Mother Jones piece shows that, at least under the Clinton-Petraeus duo, the "vetting" process was a joke. Furthermore, Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) may have been on to something when he confronted Hillary with the contention that some of the arms looted from Gaddafi’s arsenals may well have reached the Syrian rebels. There was, after all, the question of where that mysterious "charity ship," the Al Entisar, carrying "humanitarian aid" to the Syrian rebels headquartered in Turkey, sailed from.
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  • In a recent public event held at the Aspen Institute, former Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren bluntly stated that in any struggle between the Sunni jihadists and their Iranian Shi’ite enemies, the former are the "lesser evil." They’re all "bad guys," says Oren, but "we always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran." Last year, Sima Shine, Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs, declared: "The alternative, whereby [Assad falls and] Jihadists flock to Syria, is not good. We have no good options in Syria. But Assad remaining along with the Iranians is worse. His ouster would exert immense pressure on Iran." None of this should come as much of a surprise to anyone who has been following Israel’s machinations in the region. It has long been known that the Israelis have been standing very close to the sidelines of the Syrian civil war, gloating and hoping for "no outcome," as this New York Times piece put it.
  • Secondly, the open backing by the US of particular Syrian rebel groups no doubt discredited them in the eyes of most Islamist types, driving them away from the FSA and into the arms of ISIS. When it became clear Washington wasn’t going to provide air support for rebel actions on the ground, these guys left the FSA in droves – and swelled the ranks of groups that eventually coalesced into ISIS. Thirdly, the one silent partner in all this has been the state of Israel. While there is no evidence of direct Israeli backing, the public statements of some top Israeli officials lead one to believe Tel Aviv has little interest in stopping the ISIS threat – except, of course, to urge Washington to step deeper into the Syrian quagmire.
  • Israel’s goal in the region has been to gin up as much conflict and chaos as possible, keeping its Islamic enemies divided, making it impossible for any credible challenge to arise among its Arab neighbors – and aiming the main blow at Tehran. As Ambassador Oren so brazenly asserted – while paying lip service to the awfulness of ISIS and al-Qaeda – their quarrel isn’t really with the Arabs, anyway – it’s with the Persians, whom they fear and loathe, and whose destruction has been their number one objective since the days of Ariel Sharon. Why anyone is shocked that our Middle Eastern allies have been building up Sunni radicals in the region is beyond me – because this has also been de facto US policy since the Bush administration, which began recruiting American assets in the Sunni region as the linchpin of the Iraqi "surge." This was part and parcel of the so-called "Sunni turn," or "redirection," in Seymour Hersh’s phrase, which, as I warned in 2006, would become Washington’s chosen strategy for dealing with what they called the "Shia crescent" – the crescent-shaped territory spanning Iran, Iraq, Syria, and parts of Lebanon under Hezbollah’s control, which the neocons began pointing to as the Big New Threat shortly after Saddam Hussein’s defeat.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 14
     
    If one were to attempt to write the most damning yet throughly referenced report on U.S. involvement with ISIL, this manuscript would make a very good first draft.  But probably unintentionally, the author gives less credit to Israel than it is due. At least twice (and I think more but would have to check), the Israeli Air Force has struck Syria, destroying Russian heavy weaponry, missiles capable of reaching Israel, being delivered to the Lebanonese Hezbollah in Syria. Hesbollah is fighting side-by-side with the Syrian government forces in Syria. So Israel has had a direct and overt hand in the Syrian war. 
Paul Merrell

Saudi Arabia warns of shift away from U.S. over Syria, Iran | Reuters - 1 views

www.reuters.com/...audi-usa-idUSBRE99L0K120131022

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • (Reuters) - Upset at President Barack Obama's policies on Iran and Syria, members of Saudi Arabia's ruling family are threatening a rift with the United States that could take the alliance between Washington and the kingdom to its lowest point in years. Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief is vowing that the kingdom will make a "major shift" in relations with the United States to protest perceived American inaction over Syria's civil war as well as recent U.S. overtures to Iran, a source close to Saudi policy said on Tuesday.Prince Bandar bin Sultan told European diplomats that the United States had failed to act effectively against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was growing closer to Tehran, and had failed to back Saudi support for Bahrain when it crushed an anti-government revolt in 2011, the source said."The shift away from the U.S. is a major one," the source close to Saudi policy said. "Saudi doesn't want to find itself any longer in a situation where it is dependent."It was not immediately clear whether the reported statements by Prince Bandar, who was the Saudi ambassador to Washington for 22 years, had the full backing of King Abdullah.
  • Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief is vowing that the kingdom will make a "major shift" in relations with the United States to protest perceived American inaction over Syria's civil war as well as recent U.S. overtures to Iran, a source close to Saudi policy said on Tuesday.Prince Bandar bin Sultan told European diplomats that the United States had failed to act effectively against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was growing closer to Tehran, and had failed to back Saudi support for Bahrain when it crushed an anti-government revolt in 2011, the source said."The shift away from the U.S. is a major one," the source close to Saudi policy said. "Saudi doesn't want to find itself any longer in a situation where it is dependent."It was not immediately clear whether the reported statements by Prince Bandar, who was the Saudi ambassador to Washington for 22 years, had the full backing of King Abdullah.The growing breach between the United States and Saudi Arabia was also on display in Washington, where another senior Saudi prince criticized Obama's Middle East policies, accusing him of "dithering" on Syria and Israeli-Palestinian peace.
  • In unusually blunt public remarks, Prince Turki al-Faisal called Obama's policies in Syria "lamentable" and ridiculed a U.S.-Russian deal to eliminate Assad's chemical weapons. He suggested it was a ruse to let Obama avoid military action in Syria."The current charade of international control over Bashar's chemical arsenal would be funny if it were not so blatantly perfidious. And designed not only to give Mr. Obama an opportunity to back down (from military strikes), but also to help Assad to butcher his people," said Prince Turki, a member of the Saudi royal family and former director of Saudi intelligence.The United States and Saudi Arabia have been allies since the kingdom was declared in 1932, giving Riyadh a powerful military protector and Washington secure oil supplies.The Saudi criticism came days after the 40th anniversary of the October 1973 Arab oil embargo imposed to punish the West for supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur war.That was one of the low points in U.S.-Saudi ties, which were also badly shaken by the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals.
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  • Saudi Arabia gave a clear sign of its displeasure over Obama's foreign policy last week when it rejected a coveted two-year term on the U.N. Security Council in a display of anger over the failure of the international community to end the war in Syria and act on other Middle East issues.Prince Turki indicated that Saudi Arabia will not reverse that decision, which he said was a result of the Security Council's failure to stop Assad and implement its own decision on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."There is nothing whimsical about the decision to forego membership of the Security Council. It is based on the ineffectual experience of that body," he said in a speech to the Washington-based National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations.
  • Prince Bandar is seen as a foreign policy hawk, especially on Iran. The Sunni Muslim kingdom's rivalry with Shi'ite Iran, an ally of Syria, has amplified sectarian tensions across the Middle East.A son of the late defense minister and crown prince, Prince Sultan, and a protégé of the late King Fahd, he fell from favor with King Abdullah after clashing on foreign policy in 2005.But he was called in from the cold last year with a mandate to bring down Assad, diplomats in the Gulf say. Over the past year, he has led Saudi efforts to bring arms and other aid to Syrian rebels."Prince Bandar told diplomats that he plans to limit interaction with the U.S.," the source close to Saudi policy said."This happens after the U.S. failed to take any effective action on Syria and Palestine. Relations with the U.S. have been deteriorating for a while, as Saudi feels that the U.S. is growing closer with Iran and the U.S. also failed to support Saudi during the Bahrain uprising," the source said.The source declined to provide more details of Bandar's talks with the diplomats, which took place in the past few days.
  • But he suggested that the planned change in ties between the energy superpower and the United States would have wide-ranging consequences, including on arms purchases and oil sales.Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, ploughs much of its earnings back into U.S. assets. Most of the Saudi central bank's net foreign assets of $690 billion are thought to be denominated in dollars, much of them in U.S. Treasury bonds."All options are on the table now, and for sure there will be some impact," the Saudi source said.He said there would be no further coordination with the United States over the war in Syria, where the Saudis have armed and financed rebel groups fighting Assad.The kingdom has informed the United States of its actions in Syria, and diplomats say it has respected U.S. requests not to supply the groups with advanced weaponry that the West fears could fall into the hands of al Qaeda-aligned groups.Saudi anger boiled over after Washington refrained from military strikes in response to a poison gas attack in Damascus in August when Assad agreed to give up his chemical weapons arsenal.
  • Paul Merrell on 23 Oct 13
     
    This lengthy article from Reuters deserves attention. The peace initiatives by Russia/Syria and by Iran are forcing realignment of foreign policies throughout the Mideast. The U.S. is no longer perceived as being on the side of only Sunni Muslim states. One of the most visible changes (after cancellation of the U.S. military strike on Syria) is a go-it-alone declaration by the House of Saud that parallels the stance taken by Israel's ruling right-wing coalition. Both Israel and the Saudis had very successfully isolated the U.S. from the non-Sunni Arab nations, fueling and deepening a religious divide within the Arab nations. It remains to be seen whether the declarations by the House of Saud and Bibi Netanyahu will translate into effective military action against Iran and Syria, although Saudi money and weapons will continue to flow into Syria for the foreseeable future. Both nations will continue attempts to undo the looming Iran-U.S. thaw in relations. Predictably, the Zionist/Neocon hawks in Congress are pushing legislation to put a big freeze back on the Iran-U.S. thaw in relations, including a bill to stiffen economic sanctions on Iran and authorize military strikes against Syria. But that legislation seems to be going nowhere; the mood of the U.S. population (and thus of those up for election next year) has shifted to profoundly anti-war, at least as applied to Syria and Iran. It would be ironic if Russia/Syria and Iran's peace initiatives actually resulted in a lasting U.S. shift away from the Zionist/Neocon strategy to destabilize all of Israel's neighboring states except Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan (those three have already been destabilized and swept into Israel's influence). If so, Obama might yet leave a positive legacy.
Paul Merrell

Did Iranian Weapons Kill Americans? Another phony argument against a deal with Iran | C... - 0 views

www.councilforthenationalinterest.org/...ument-against-a-deal-with-iran

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth Israel-lobby Iraq IEDs propaganda-debunking

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • There is a new entrant in the already crowded field of Israeli Lobby funded groups opposed to an agreement with Iran over its nuclear program. It is the “wounded warriors” and their families denouncing the perfidious Persians. The first salvo was fired on August 4th in a letter to Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post from the daughter of an Army Lieutenant Colonel killed in Iraq by “Iranian weapons,” who concluded that “we are already at war with Iran.” After the letter ads began to appear in television markets where congressmen considered to be vulnerable to pressure from Israel’s friends were located. The ads were produced by a group called “Veterans Against an Iran Deal,” whose executive director is Michael Pregent, a former adviser to General David Petraeus who is also an “Expert” affiliated with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spin off. The group has a website which claims that “the Iranian regime murdered and maimed thousands of Americans” but there is no indication who exactly supports it and is providing funding or what kind of following it has. The group’s first ad featured as a spokesman a retired army Staff Sergeant named Robert Bartlett. In the video, Bartlett, whose face bears the scars resulting from being on the receiving end of an improvised explosive device in Iraq, claims he was “blown up by an Iranian bomb.” In addition to blaming Iran for providing Iraqi insurgents with the weapons that were used to maim him and kill his colleagues he also tells how Iranians would “kidnap kids” and kill them in front of their parents. Per Bartlett, those who deal with Iran will have “blood on their hands” and will be responsible for funding Iranian terror.
  • Bartlett’s anger is nevertheless understandable, but his claim that he was maimed by Iranian provided weapons should not go unchallenged. In actual fact, it is a lie. In 2005 the Bush Administration began to claim that Iran had been “interfering” in Iraq. The claim, rarely backed up by an substance, was based on suppositions about Tehran’s likely interests regarding its predominantly Shi’ite neighbor and it was little more than an excuse to explain the persistence and intensity of Iraqi resistance to the American invasion. Sophisticated roadside bombs using shaped charges, initially referred to as Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and subsequently as Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFPs), first appeared in Iraq in the summer of 2004. Initial reports on the weapon in June 2005, stated that it was being used by Sunni insurgents and was likely produced by ordnance experts from the disbanded Iraqi Army. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had a large army with a sophisticated if limited ability to produce some weapons in its own armories. When the army was foolishly disbanded by the Coalition Provisional Authority, skilled workers who had been employed in the weapons shops were made redundant and took with them the knowledge to make any number of improvised weapons using the materiel that remained in Iraq’s arms storage depots.
  • The indictment of Iran as the source of weapons being used by insurgents continued and intensified as the security situation in Iraq deteriorated. Some media coverage attributed the killing of hundreds of American soldiers to Iranian supplied weapons because any death by EFP was immediately attributed to Iran. In spite of the lack of any solid evidence, the largely neoconservative supporters of pre-emptive action against Iran stated specifically that Iran was “killing American soldiers” through its provision of sophisticated weaponry. A nearly hysterical progress report given to Congress by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on April 8, 2008 went even farther, claiming that Iran was responsible for most of the violence occurring in Iraq. But the argument about Iranian involvement in Iraq was itself logically inconsistent, something that Crocker and Petraeus should have understood. The Iraqi insurgency in the period 2004-2006 was largely Sunni and hostile to Iran. That the Iranians would be supplying the Sunnis or that the Sunnis would have sought such aid was implausible.
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Aug 15
     
    Shia Iran providing IED weapons to Sunni militants in Iraq? Preposterous. The latest Israel lobby false propaganda blast aimed at shooting down the agreement with Iran in Congress.  
Paul Merrell

The Forever War on Creators.com - 0 views

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war & peace Syria ISIL Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • The strategy that President Obama laid out Wednesday night to "degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL," is incoherent, inconsistent and, ultimately, non-credible. A year ago, Obama and John Kerry were straining at the leash to launch air strikes on Syrian President Bashar Assad for his alleged use of chemical weapons in "killing his own people." But when Americans rose as one to demand that we stay out of Syria, Obama hastily erased his "red line" and announced a new policy of not getting involved in "somebody else's civil war." Now, after videos of the beheadings of two U.S. journalists have set the nation on fire, the president, reading the polls, has flipped again. Now Obama wants to lead the West and the Arab world straight into Syria's civil war. Only this time we bomb ISIL, not Assad.
  • Who will provide the legions Obama will deploy to crush ISIL in Syria? The Free Syrian Army, the same rebels who have been routed again and again and whose chances of ousting Assad were derided by Obama himself in August as a "fantasy"? The FSA, the president mocked, is a force of "former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth." Now Obama wants Congress to appropriate $500 million to train and arm those doctors and pharmacists and send them into battle against an army of jihadist terrorists who just bit off one-third of Iraq. Before Congress votes a dime, it should get some answers. Whom will this Free Syrian Army fight? ISIL alone? The al-Nusra Front? Hezbollah in Syria? Assad's army? How many years will it take to train, equip and build the FSA into a force that can crush both Assad and ISIL?
  • "Tell me how this thing ends," said Gen. David Petraeus on the road up to Baghdad in 2003. The president did not tell us how this new war ends. If Assad falls, do the Alawites and Christians survive? Does Syria disintegrate? Who will rule in Damascus? The United States spent seven years building an army to hold Iraq together. Yet when a few thousand ISIL fighters stormed in from Syria, that army broke and fled all the way to Baghdad. Even the Kurdish peshmerga broke and ran. What makes us think we can succeed in Syria where we failed in Iraq. If ISIL is our mortal enemy and Syria its sanctuary, there are two armies capable of crushing it together — the Syrian and Turkish armies. <a onClick="return adgo(5541,10783,this.href);" href="http://adserver.adtechus.com/adlink/3.0/5235/1297475/0/170/ADTECH;cookie=info;loc=300;key=key1+key2+key3+key4;grp=13579" target="_blank"><img src="http://adserver.adtechus.com/adserv/3.0/5235/1297475/0/170/ADTECH;cookie=info;loc=300;key=key1+key2+key3+key4;grp=13579" border="0" width="300" height="250"></a> But Turkey, a NATO ally, was not even mentioned in Obama's speech. Why? Because the Turks have been allowing jihadists to cross into Syria, as they have long sought the fall of Assad.
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  • Now, with the Islamic State holding hostage 49 Turkish diplomats and their families in Mosul, Ankara is even more reluctant to intervene. Nor is there any indication Turkey will let the United States use its air base at Incirlik to attack ISIS. In Iraq, too, thousands of ground troops will be needed to dig the Islamic State out of the Sunni cities and towns. Where will these soldiers come from? We are told the Iraqi army, Shia militia, Kurds and Sunni tribesmen will join forces to defeat and drive out the Islamic State. But these Shia militia were, not long ago, killing U.S. soldiers. And, like the Iraqi army, they are feared and hated in Sunni villages, which is why many Sunni welcomed ISIL. A number of NATO allies have indicated a willingness to join the U.S. in air strikes on the Islamic State in Iraq. None has offered to send troops. Similar responses have come from the Arab League.
  • But if this is truly a mortal threat, why the reluctance to send troops? Some of our Arab allies, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Gulf Arabs, have reportedly been providing aid to ISIL in Syria. Why would they aid these terrorists? Because ISIL looked like the best bet to bring down Assad, whom many Sunni loathe as an Arab and Alawite ally of Iran in the heart of the "Shia Crescent" of Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus and Hezbollah. For many Sunni Arabs, the greater fear is of Shia hegemony in the Gulf and a new Persian empire in the Middle East. Among all the nations involved here, the least threatened is the United States. Our intelligence agencies, Obama, says, have discovered no evidence of any planned or imminent attack from ISIL. As the threat is not primarily ours, the urgency to go to war is not ours. And upon the basis of what we heard Wednesday night, either this war has not been thought through by the president, or he is inhibited from telling us the whole truth about what victory will look like and what destroying the Islamic State will require in blood, treasure and years.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Sep 14
     
    Pat Buchanan wants to hear from Congress before Obama starts another war. 
Paul Merrell

Land Destroyer: CNN: Libyan "Rebels" Are Now ISIS - 0 views

landdestroyer.blogspot.dk/...ibyan-rebels-are-now-isis.html

war & peace Syria Libya ISIL U.S.-foreign-policy false-flag

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • The United States has attempted to claim that the only way to stop the so-called "Islamic State" in Syria and Iraq is to first remove the government in Syria. Complicating this plan are developments in Libya, benefactor of NATO's last successful regime change campaign. In 2011, NATO armed, funded, and backed with a sweeping air campaign militants in Libya centered around the eastern Libyan cities of Tobruk, Derna, and Benghazi. By October 2011, NATO successfully destroyed the Libyan government, effectively handing the nation over to these militants. 
  • What ensued was a campaign of barbarism, genocide, and sectarian extremism as brutal in reality as what NATO claimed in fiction was perpetrated by the Libyan government ahead of its intervention. The so-called "rebels" NATO had backed were revealed to be terrorists led by Al Qaeda factions including the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The so-called "pro-democracy protesters" Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was poised to attack in what NATO claimed was pending "genocide" were in fact heavily armed terrorists that have festered for decades in eastern Libya. Almost immediately after NATO successfully destroyed Libya's government, its terrorist proxies were mobilized to take part in NATO's next campaign against Syria. Libyan terrorists were sent first to NATO-member Turkey were they were staged, armed, trained, and equipped, before crossing the Turkish-Syrian border to take part in the fighting. 
  • CNN in an article titled, "ISIS comes to Libya," claims: The black flag of ISIS flies over government buildings. Police cars carry the group's insignia. The local football stadium is used for public executions. A town in Syria or Iraq? No. A city on the coast of the Mediterranean, in Libya.  Fighters loyal to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria are now in complete control of the city of Derna, population of about 100,000, not far from the Egyptian border and just about 200 miles from the southern shores of the European Union.  The fighters are taking advantage of political chaos to rapidly expand their presence westwards along the coast, Libyan sources tell CNN. Only the black flag of Al Qaeda/ISIS has already long been flying over Libya - even at the height of NATO's intervention there in 2011.  ISIS didn't "come to" Libya, it was always there in the form of Al Qaeda's local franchises LIFG and AQIM - long-term, bitter enemies of the now deposed and assassinated Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi.
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  • CNN's latest article is merely the veneer finally peeling away from the alleged "revolution" it had attempted to convince readers had taken place in 2011.
  • Even amid CNN's own spin, it admits ISIS' presence in Libya is not a new phenomenon but rather the above mentioned sectarian extremists who left Libya to fight in Syria simply returning and reasserting themselves in the eastern Cyrenaica region. CNN also admits that these terrorists have existed in Libya for decades and were kept in check primarily by Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. With Qaddafi eliminated and all semblance of national unity destroyed by NATO's intervention in 2011, Al Qaeda has been able to not only prosper in Libya but use the decimated nation as a spingboard for invading and destroying other nations. Worst of all, Al Qaeda's rise in Libya was not merely the unintended consequence of a poorly conceived plan by NATO for military intervention, but a premeditated regional campaign to first build up then use Al Qaeda as a mercenary force to overthrow and destroy a series of nations, beginning with Libya, moving across North Africa and into nations like Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and eventually Iran. From there, NATO's mercenary force would be on the borders of Russia and China ready to augment already Western-backed extremists in the Caucasus and Xinjiang regions. In 2011, geopolitical analyst Dr. Webster Tarpley in his article, "The CIA’s Libya Rebels: The Same Terrorists who Killed US, NATO Troops in Iraq," noted that the US strategy was to:
  • ...use Al Qaeda to overthrow independent governments, and then either Balkanize and partition the countries in question, or else use them as kamikaze puppets against larger enemies like Russia, China, or Iran. Dr. Tarpley would also note in 2011 that: One of the fatal contradictions in the current State Department and CIA policy is that it aims at a cordial alliance with Al Qaeda killers in northeast Libya, at the very moment when the United States and NATO are mercilessly bombing the civilian northwest Pakistan in the name of a total war against Al Qaeda, and US and NATO forces are being killed by Al Qaeda guerrillas in that same Afghanistan-Pakistan theater of war. The force of this glaring contradiction causes the entire edifice of US war propaganda to collapse. The US has long since lost any basis in morality for military force.  In fact, terrorist fighters from northeast Libya may be killing US and NATO troops in Afghanistan right now, even as the US and NATO protect their home base from the Qaddafi government. Indeed, the very terrorists NATO handed the entire nation of Libya over to, are now allegedly prime targets in Syria and Iraq. The "pro-democracy rebels" of 2011 are now revealed to be "ISIS terrorists" with long-standing ties to Al Qaeda.
  • Not even mentioning the fact that Al Qaeda's very inception was to serve as a joint US-Saudi mercenary force to fight a proxy war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, the terrorist organization has since played a central role in the Balkans to justify NATO intervention there, and as a divisive force in Iraq during the US occupation to blunt what began as a formidable joint Sunni-Shia'a resistance movement. In 2007, it was revealed by Pulitzer Prize-winning veteran journalist Seymour Hersh that the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia were conspiring to use Al Qaeda once again, this time to undermine, destabilize, and destroy the governments of Syria and Iran in what would be a regional sectarian bloodbath. Hersh would report (emphasis added): To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. 
  • Hersh would note that Iran was perceived to be the greater threat and therefore, despite a constant barrage of propaganda claiming otherwise, Al Qaeda and its various affiliates were "lesser enemies." Even in 2007, Hersh's report would predict almost verbatim the cataclysmic regional sectarian bloodbath that would take place, with the West's extremists waging war not only on Shia'a populations but also on other religious minorities including Christians. His report would note: Robert Baer, a former longtime C.I.A. agent in Lebanon, has been a severe critic of Hezbollah and has warned of its links to Iranian-sponsored terrorism. But now, he told me, “we’ve got Sunni Arabs preparing for cataclysmic conflict, and we will need somebody to protect the Christians in Lebanon. It used to be the French and the United States who would do it, and now it’s going to be Nasrallah and the Shiites.  And this is precisely what is happening, word for word, page by page - everything warned about in Hersh's report has come to pass. In 2011, geopolitical analyst Dr. Webster Tarpley and others would also reiterate the insidious regional campaign Western policymakers were carrying out with Al Qaeda terrorists disguised as "rebels," "activists," and "moderate fighters" for the purpose of arming, funding, and even militarily intervening on their behalf in attempts to effect regime change and tilt the balance in the Middle East and North Africa region against Iran, Russia, and China. CNN's attempt to explain why ISIS is "suddenly" in Libya is one of many attempts to explain the regional rise of this organization in every way possible besides in terms of the truth - that ISIS is the result of multinational state sponsored terrorism including the US, UK, EU, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel as its chief backers.
  • Inexplicably, amid allegedly fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the United States now claims it must first overthrow the Syrian government, despite it being the only viable, secular force in the region capable of keeping ISIS and its affiliates in check. CNN, in an article titled, "Sources: Obama seeks new Syria strategy review to deal with ISIS, al-Assad," would report: President Barack Obama has asked his national security team for another review of the U.S. policy toward Syria after realizing that ISIS may not be defeated without a political transition in Syria and the removal of President Bashar al-Assad, senior U.S. officials and diplomats tell CNN. Neither CNN, nor the politicians it cited in its article were able to articulate just why removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power would somehow diminish the fighting capacity of ISIS. With CNN's recent article on ISIS' gains in Libya despite US-led NATO regime change there, after decades of Libyan leader Qaddafi keeping extremists in check, it would appear that NATO is once again attempting not to stop Al Qaeda/ISIS, but rather hand them yet another country to use as a base of operations. The goal is not to stop ISIS or even effect regime change in Syria alone - but rather hand Syria over as a failed, divided state to terrorists to use as a springboard against Iran, then Russia and China.
  • Clearly, ISIS' appearance in Libya negates entirely the already incomprehensible strategy the US has proposed of needing to first depose the Syrian government, then fight ISIS. The Syrian government, like that of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, is the only effective force currently fighting ISIS and Al Qaeda's many other franchises operating in the region. Deposing the government in Damascus would compound the fight against sectarian terrorists - and the West is fully aware of that. Therefore, attempts to topple the secular government in Damascus is in every way the intentional aiding and abetting of ISIS and the sharing in complicity of all the horrific daily atrocities ISIS and its affiliates are carrying out. The morally bankrupt, insidious, dangerous, and very genocidal plans hatched in 2007 and executed in earnest in 2011 illustrate that ISIS alone is not the greatest threat to global peace and stability, but also those that constitute its multinational state sponsors. The very West purportedly defending civilization is the chief protagonist destroying it worldwide.  
Paul Merrell

Libya Coming Full Circle. When A Deemed "Conspiracy Theory" Becomes Reality | Global Re... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5387468

U.S.-foreign-policy neocons War-Party Libya failed-state Benghazi

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • In the duration of the “revolutionary frenzy” that categorized western media coverage of the Libyan Civil War in 2011, public audiences were captivated with both tales of rebels aspiring for “democracy” and with complimenting stories of unabated brutality by Gaddafi forces. Without any serious mainstream criticism, an imperialist mythology centered on the interventionist doctrine of the “Responsibility to Protect” was cemented in public consciousness with even usually non-mainstream and “anti-imperialist” figures such as Juan Cole deliberately misrepresenting the situation in Libya. In Cole’s perspective, no reference to armed militants from the start of the conflict or the role of extremism and western premeditation found its way into the narrative and he predicted a simplistic narrative where the overthrow of Gaddafi would lead the region into an era of unity, prosperity and freedom. Libya Today How is Libya today? If one denied the existence of hell, they need not look further than Libya to observe a case of hell on Earth. Libya as a functioning, cohesive state has virtually ceased to exist, having been replaced by a myriad of conflicting factions divided on tribal and religious lines. While mainstream media tends to obscure the identity of these factions and their connection to western imperialists, Eric Draitser in his analysis, “Benghazi, the CIA, and the War in Libya” shows the beyond the fractious infighting, both primary factions engaging in direct combat have been beneficiaries of the NATO imperialist powers in their systematic aggression against the Libyan state.
  • “Confirmed: U.S. Armed Al Qaeda to Topple Libya’s Gaddaffi” with a very astonishing admission by “top military officers, CIA insiders and think-tankers” confirming the obvious truth that “conspiracy theorists” have been saying since 2011. The US backed Al Qaeda in Libya and that the Benghazi attack was a byproduct of this. Washington’s Blog notes that in 2012, it documented that: The U.S. supported opposition which overthrew Libya’s Gadaffi was largely comprised of Al Qaeda terrorists. According to a 2007 report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center’s center, the Libyan city of Benghazi was one of Al Qaeda’s main headquarters – and bases for sending Al Qaeda fighters into Iraq – prior to the overthrow of Gaddafi: The Hindustan Times reported last year: “There is no question that al Qaeda’s Libyan franchise, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, is a part of the opposition,” Bruce Riedel, former CIA officer and a leading expert on terrorism, told Hindustan Times. It has always been Qaddafi’s biggest enemy and its stronghold is Benghazi. Al Qaeda is now largely in control of Libya.  Indeed, Al Qaeda flags were flown over the Benghazi courthouse once Gaddafi was toppled. What was once deemed conspiracy theory became confirmed reality when the Daily Mail reported as Washington’s Blog subsequently pointed out:
  • A self-selected group of former top military officers, CIA insiders and think-tankers, declared Tuesday in Washington that a seven-month review of the deadly 2012 terrorist attack has determined that it could have been prevented – if the U.S. hadn’t been helping to arm al-Qaeda militias throughout Libya a year earlier. ‘The United States switched sides in the war on terror with what we did in Libya, knowingly facilitating the provision of weapons to known al-Qaeda militias and figures,’ Clare Lopez, a member of the commission and a former CIA officer, told MailOnline. She blamed the Obama administration for failing to stop half of a $1 billion United Arab Emirates arms shipment from reaching al-Qaeda-linked militants. ‘Remember, these weapons that came into Benghazi were permitted to enter by our armed forces who were blockading the approaches from air and sea,’ Lopez claimed. ‘They were permitted to come in. … [They] knew these weapons were coming in, and that was allowed.. ‘The intelligence community was part of that, the Department of State was part of that, and certainly that means that the top leadership of the United States, our national security leadership, and potentially Congress – if they were briefed on this – also knew about this.’
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  • ‘The White House and senior Congressional members,’ the group wrote in an interim report released Tuesday, ‘deliberately and knowingly pursued a policy that provided material support to terrorist organizations in order to topple a ruler [Muammar Gaddafi] who had been working closely with the West actively to suppress al-Qaeda.’ ‘Some look at it as treason,’ said Wayne Simmons, a former CIA officer who participated in the commission’s research. While Wayne Simmons’ characterization of such actions by the globalist, imperialist establishment in the United States as “treason” is correct in the sense that it was a clear violation of not only the Constitution, but the public interest of America, there is a rather disingenuous factor involved when some people, especially on the Neo-Con right, attempt to play the “treason card.”
  • Clearly the Neo-Con agenda has been coming full circle since the first Gulf War in the 1990s. The US “gun-walking” to jihadis in Syria from Libya, noted by the Washington Times and New York Times (albeit with partisan spin and distortion), was actually planned under Bush in 2007 as noted by Seymour Hersh in “The Redirection.” It has continued under Obama, influenced by Council on Foreign Relations figures throughout both administrations from Dick Cheney to Hillary Clinton. Consider the following points from “The Redirection”: To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
  • To dispel critics’ notions that this is passive, uncontrollable, and indirect support, consider: [Saudi Arabia's] Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran. Neo-Conservative writer Gary Gambill would ride on this wave of terrorist aggression and pen an article for the Neo-Con “Middle East Forum” titled “Two Cheers for Syrian Islamists.” As noted in the analysis of the piece by Tony Cartalucci titled “Globalist Rag Gives ‘Two Cheers’ for Terrorism”, one can see how terrorism is a useful piece of capital of globalist imperialism that is easy to hide in the sight of inattentive masses with easy ploys of political spin and plausible deniability.
  • Libyan terrorists are invading Syria. They have been doing so since the influx of jihadis began, enabled by outside powers. These are not simply rogue networks operating independently but rather include state-sponsorship, especially of NATO-member Turkey and NATO’s criminal proxy government in Tripoli, Libya. We are told by the media that the regime in Tripoli under the auspice of the National Transitional Council, and populated with puppets like Mustapha Abdul Jalil, is a moderate regime distinct from the “marginal Islamist forces.” However, even in mainstream accounts, one can note that these “official, moderate” groups are involved with funding terrorism themselves as many geopolitical analysts have noted. Tony Cartalucci notes that, “In November 2011, the Telegraph in their article, “Leading Libyan Islamist met Free Syrian Army opposition group,” would report”: Abdulhakim Belhadj, head of the Tripoli Military Council and the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, “met with Free Syrian Army leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey,” said a military official working with Mr Belhadj. “Mustafa Abdul Jalil (the interim Libyan president) sent him there.”
  • Paul Merrell on 23 Jun 14
     
    Lots of documentation on the tawdry moves by the War Party in Libya and Benghazi, now blowing up in their faces. 
Paul Merrell

ISTANBUL: Iraq unraveling as top Shiite cleric issues call to arms - World Wires - Miam... - 0 views

www.miamiherald.com/...lly-in-iraq-as-top-cleric.html

ISIL U.S.-foreign-policy war by proxy war & peace Iraq Iran

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • The likely breakup of Iraq into feuding ethnic and sectarian bastions accelerated Friday as Iraq’s senior Shiite Muslim cleric broke years of support for the central government and decreed that every able-bodied Shiite man had a religious obligation to defend the sect’s holy sites from rebellious Sunni Muslims led by fighters from the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.In answer to the call, thousands of Shiites _ many with militia experience from the sectarian war that pitted Sunnis against Shiites and killed thousands from 2006 to 2008 _ flooded the cities of Baghdad, Najaf and Karbala to receive weapons, enlist in organized units and receive their orders.
  • Hours later, President Barack Obama made it clear that the United States was unwilling to commit itself to the defense of a government that had been unable to resolve Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian differences. “We're not going to allow ourselves to be dragged back into a situation in which, while we're there, we're keeping a lid on things, and after enormous sacrifices by us, as soon as we're not there, suddenly people end up acting in ways that are not conducive to the long-term stability and prosperity of the country,” Obama said.With Sunni Islamists in control of much of the north and west, Kurds expanding their control of the long-contested Kirkuk region and Shiites gathering for sectarian war, the likelihood of any accommodation seemed remote. Emma Sky, a fellow at Yale University who advised U.S. forces in Iraq until 2010, called the events “the slow death” of the Iraqi state in an interview with McClatchy.
  • Iranian and Iraqi news organizations were filled with reports that the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ al Quds Force, the cross between an intelligence agency and special forces that’s often deployed to pursue Iranian foreign and security policy, had arrived in Baghdad to direct the fight against ISIS after four days that saw the army crumble.Iranian Gen. Qassem Suleimani was, according to numerous credible reports, said to be directing the defenses of Baghdad personally. Suleimani, a well-known figure in Middle East security circles, is said to control Iranian operations in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. Supporters of Iran often credit him with devising the strategy that’s salvaged the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad during the past year of civil war there.On Friday, CNN reported that a senior Iraqi official had said that as many as 500 troops from the al Quds Force had begun arriving to help protect Baghdad. CNN said the official had said the Iranians would be deployed to Diyala province, a mixed Sunni and Shiite area, where their presence would generate less anger than in the mostly Sunni areas now under ISIS control.A former European intelligence official, who runs a consultancy in the region and regularly deals with Iranian government representatives in the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan, said in an interview that he expected any Iranian troops sent to Iraq would augment what was already a robust covert presence.
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  • “Hajj Qassem does not get taken by surprise, not next door to his own country,” the consultant said, asking that his own name not be used on such a sensitive subject. “Hajj” is an Islamic honorific. The consultant said he suspected that ISIS’s rapid advance hadn’t surprised the Iranians. “I’ve been hearing about the problems with ISIS in the desert outside Mosul for a year and have been told the Iranians were warning Maliki about this,” he said.The claim that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki had had ample warning of a serious problem, beyond the loss of the western desert of al Anbar nearly six months ago, also was made by a top security official of the peshmerga, the Kurdish militia.
Paul Merrell

Iraq's Attack Against ISIS Catches U.S. 'By Surprise' - The Daily Beast - 0 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...s-catches-u-s-by-surprise.html

war & peace Iraq Iran ISIL Tikrit U.S.-foreign-policy rift

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The Iraqi military launched a major campaign to take back a key city from the self-proclaimed Islamic State over the weekend—a move that caught the U.S. “by surprise,” in the words of one American government official.The U.S.-led coalition forces that have conducted seven months of airstrikes on Iraq’s behalf did not participate in the attack, defense officials told The Daily Beast, and the American military has no plans to chip in.Instead, embedded Iranian advisers and Iranian-backed Shiite militias are taking part in the offensive on the largely Sunni town, raising the prospect that the fight to beat back ISIS could become a sectarian war. The news is the latest indication that not all is well with the American effort against the terror group. On Friday, U.S. defense officials told The Daily Beast that a planned offensive against the ISIS stronghold of Mosul had been indefinitely postponed. Over the weekend, an American-backed rebel group in Syria announced that it was dissolving, and joining an Islamist faction.
  • Then there was the unexpected battle for Tikrit. Over the weekend, a reported 30,000 troops and militiamen—mostly Shiites —stormed the Sunni dominated city of Tikrit, former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s hometown and the symbolic birthplace of his three decades of repressive practices against the majority Shiite population.U.S. officials were largely left in the dark of the planning and timing of the operation, defense officials said. The Pentagon said Monday it was not conducting airstrikes in support of the Tikrit offensive because the Iraqi government did not ask for such help.The U.S. had seen the prospect of strikes in Tikrit for a while but the timing and nature of the attack “caught us by surprise,” one government official explained to The Daily Beast.
  • The depth of Iranian involvement and the dearth of U.S. engagement in the battle for Tikrit suggested the coalition-led campaign did little to weaken Iranian influence on Iraqi security. Two U.S. defense officials told The Daily Beast that Iranian troops were firing Iranian artillery  “in the vicinity of” the Iraqi military campaign. And there were several reports that Major General Qassem Soleimani, the shadowy commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s overseas operation arm, is also on the ground near Tikrit. The Iraqi decision to cut out the U.S.-led coalition turned the war against ISIS in Iraq into a dual track approach—one carried out by the U.S.-led coalition another directed by the Iranians. Each has its own military strategy.
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  • But the Iranian-led approach the clearing of Tikrit is largely sectarian—with Shiite militias reviled and feared by Sunni residents. Rather than a deliberate military campaign, the forces appear prepared to pound Tikrit, hard. And perhaps because of that, there is no need for an air campaign.There are already fears that the Iraqi effort, backed by their Iranian supporters, will decimate parts of the city, defense officials said. Such actions would have great symbolic effect and make increasingly unlikely the mending of sectarian tensions between the minority Sunnis and their Shiite-dominated government.
  • An adviser to the U.S. government tasked with monitoring and engaging with Iraqi officials told The Daily Beast, “I think there is a great deal of joy about going into the city that fought Iran for a decade,” referring to Tikrit’s role in the seven-year war against Iran. “Imagine Qassem Soleimani is in Tikrit directing Iraqi forces in the destruction of the symbol of the former regime and the Sunni resistance,” the adviser added. Because of that, Pentagon officials are watching carefully how the Iraqi forces carry out their campaign to rid Tikrit of ISIS, though they concede the signs are not promising.“This is a real bellwether,” said a second defense official. “If this becomes a sectarian battle, we will shift to simply counter terrorism, and away from training Iraqi forces. And the coalition will come apart.”
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Mar 15
     
    Iran and Iraq attack the U.S. covert ISIL army, without tellling the U.S. It's almost as though the Iranian and Iraqi military commanders do not trust the U.S. Why might that be?
Paul Merrell

Don't Put US Advisors in Greater Danger in Iraq « LobeLog - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/sors-in-greater-danger-in-iraq

war & peace Iraq U.S.-foreign-policy mission-creep

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Senior American officials are considering the deployment of US advisors to some largely isolated pockets of resistance in Iraq’s al-Anbar Province. Such a move would be fraught with risk since Anbar is mainly controlled by the Islamic State (ISIS or IS). These garrisons behind IS lines have been coming under greater pressure, and some have recently fallen. A handful of US advisors out there would make little difference, but other measures could help these garrisons hang on. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s government has done practically nothing to reverse the dynamic in Anbar by turning Sunni Arabs against IS. Just as former PM Nouri al-Maliki senselessly drove most Sunni Arabs into IS’s arms through persecution, the Abadi government might rather see most Sunni Arabs crushed than empower them by making important concessions. That may sound bizarre, but not if Abadi and his Shi’a cronies believe the US would eventually feel compelled to intervene militarily with combat troops to smash IS (along with a lot of Sunni Arab Iraqis caught in the middle) if Iraqi forces cannot rebound. Baghdad also knows US Congressional hawks have been pressing for such military action.
  • Joint Chiefs Chairman General Martin Dempsey announced on October 30 that it was necessary to expand the American “train, advise and assist mission…into the al-Anbar Province.” US planners meant to reassure by stating they would not place advisors with units smaller than an Iraqi Army brigade (roughly 2,000 men), but several vulnerable garrisons either have that many soldiers or a composite force that large of soldiers, tribesmen, and in some cases Shi’a militiamen (presumably making them candidates for a US advisory presence—yet not especially safe ones). The makeup of the garrison of the sprawling al-Asad Airbase complex near the city of Hit is unclear, but the defenders of the vital Haditha Dam on the Euphrates are a mixed bag of soldiers and tribesmen, and those holding the city of Samarra and much of Baiji north of Baghdad are soldiers bolstered by Shi’a militiamen. The garrison of the city of Ramadi west of Baghdad consists of soldiers and tribesmen.
  • The hazards of deploying US advisors into isolated garrisons could be extreme. Since some garrisons were overwhelmed very quickly once their resistance cracked, there is no guarantee US advisors could be extracted quickly amidst the chaos of such a collapse. Advisors could be killed or captured. If captured, IS would showcase them, and then probably use them for televised beheadings. Additionally, in pockets with garrisons of Iraqi soldiers mixed with either Shi’a militiamen or tribesmen, US advisors could be threatened by their hosts. Many Shi’a militias are anti-American, harboring profound grudges. Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army lost hundreds of fighters to US forces in Karbala in 2004 and Baghdad and Basra in 2008. American advisors could be killed by militiamen under murky circumstances. And garrisons nearing the end of their ability to defend themselves might even turn US advisors over to IS in exchange for guarantees of a safe passage out or better treatment.
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  • The risks involved in placing US advisors in harm’s way also probably would not be outweighed by their impact on the conflict. Just as US airstrikes will not remove the Islamic State from Iraq alone, a few US advisors cannot save isolated anti-IS garrisons. Having fought on so long, those in these pockets of resistance already have demonstrated their determination and ability to fight. What they need most are weapons, ammunition, food, and fuel. Reinforcements from Baghdad would help too, but Baghdad has rarely provided those.
  • As has been the case all along, the most potent asset in IS’s portfolio has been the harsh sectarianism and appalling ineptitude of one—now quite possibly two—Shi’a dominated Iraqi governments. Plan B in coping with the threat faced by Anbar’s remaining anti-IS forces should not be sending US advisors into that unpredictable maelstrom in an effort to compensate for Baghdad’s failings. Without game-changing Iraqi concessions drawing thousands of Sunni Arab fighters away from IS, even if US ground forces were deployed, they too would face a far tougher slog.
Paul Merrell

Reported US-Syrian Accord on Air Strikes | Consortiumnews - 1 views

consortiumnews.com/...s-syrian-accord-on-air-strikes

war & peace Syria ISIL U.S.-foreign-policy limited-truce

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Exclusive: A problem with President Obama’s plan to expand the war against ISIS into Syria was always the risk that Syrian air defenses might fire on U.S. warplanes, but now a source says Syria’s President Assad has quietly agreed to permit strikes in some parts of Syria, reports Robert Parry.
  • The Obama administration, working through the Russian government, has secured an agreement from the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad to permit U.S. airstrikes against Islamic State targets in parts of Syria, according to a source briefed on the secret arrangements. The reported agreement would clear away one of the chief obstacles to President Barack Obama’s plan to authorize U.S. warplanes to cross into Syria to attack Islamic State forces – the concern that entering Syrian territory might prompt anti-aircraft fire from the Syrian government’s missile batteries.
  • In essence, that appears to be what is happening behind the scenes in Syria despite the hostility between the Obama administration and the Assad government. Obama has called for the removal of Assad but the two leaders find themselves on the same side in the fight against the Islamic State terrorists who have battled Assad’s forces while also attacking the U.S.-supported Iraqi government and beheading two American journalists.
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  • The usual protocol for the U.S. military – when operating in territory without a government’s permission – is to destroy the air defenses prior to conducting airstrikes so as to protect American pilots and aircraft, as was done with Libya in 2011. However, in other cases, U.S. intelligence agencies have arranged for secret permission from governments for such attacks, creating a public ambiguity usually for the benefit of the foreign leaders while gaining the necessary U.S. military assurances.
  • Just last month, Obama himself termed the strategy of arming supposedly “moderate” Syrian rebels “a fantasy.” He told the New York Times’ Thomas L. Friedman: “This idea that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth, and that they were going to be able to battle not only a well-armed state but also a well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by Iran, a battle-hardened Hezbollah, that was never in the cards.” Obama’s point would seem to apply at least as much to having the “moderate” rebels face down the ruthless Islamic State jihadists who engage in suicide bombings and slaughter their captives without mercy. But this “fantasy” of the “moderate” rebels has a big following in Congress and on the major U.S. op-ed pages, so Obama has included the $500 million in his war plan despite the risk it poses to Assad’s acquiescence to American air attacks.
  • In a national address last week, Obama vowed to order U.S. air attacks across Syria’s border without any coordination with the Syrian government, a proposition that Damascus denounced as a violation of its sovereignty. So, in this case, Syria’s behind-the-scenes acquiescence also might provide some politically useful ambiguity for Obama as well as Assad. Yet, this secret collaboration may go even further and include Syrian government assistance in the targeting of the U.S. attacks, according to the source who spoke on condition of anonymity. That is another feature of U.S. military protocol in conducting air strikes – to have some on-the-ground help in pinpointing the attacks. As part of its public pronouncements about the future Syrian attacks, the Obama administration sought $500 million to train “vetted” Syrian rebels to handle the targeting tasks inside Syria as well as to carry out military ground attacks. But that approach – while popular on Capitol Hill – could delay any U.S. airstrikes into Syria for months and could possibly negate Assad’s quiet acceptance of the U.S. attacks, since the U.S.-backed rebels share one key goal of the Islamic State, the overthrow of Assad’s relatively secular regime.
  • Without Assad’s consent, the U.S. airstrikes might require a much wider U.S. bombing campaign to first target Syrian government defenses, a development long sought by Official Washington’s influential neoconservatives who have kept “regime change” in Syria near the top of their international wish list. For the past several years, the Israeli government also has sought the overthrow of Assad, even at the risk of Islamic extremists gaining power. The Israeli thinking had been that Assad, as an ally of Iran, represented a greater threat to Israel because his government was at the center of the so-called Shiite crescent reaching from Tehran through Damascus to Beirut and southern Lebanon, the base for Hezbollah.
  • The thinking was that if Assad’s government could be pulled down, Iran and Hezbollah – two of Israel’s principal “enemies” – would be badly damaged. A year ago, then-Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren articulated this geopolitical position in an interview with the Jerusalem Post. “The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc,” Oren said. “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.” He said this was the case even if the other “bad guys” were affiliated with al-Qaeda. More recently, however, with the al-Qaeda-connected Nusra Front having seized Syrian territory adjacent to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights – forcing the withdrawal of UN peacekeepers – the balance of Israeli interests may be tipping in favor of preferring Assad to having Islamic extremists possibly penetrating directly into Israeli territory.
  • In the longer term, by working together to create political solutions to various Mideast crises, the Obama-Putin cooperation threatened to destroy the neocons’ preferred strategy of escalating U.S. military involvement in the region. There was the prospect, too, that the U.S.-Russian tag team might strong-arm Israel into a peace agreement with the Palestinians. So, starting last September – almost immediately after Putin helped avert a U.S. air war against Syria – key neocons began taking aim at Ukraine as a potential sore point for Putin. A leading neocon, Carl Gershman, president of the U.S.-government-funded National Endowment for Democracy, took to the op-ed pages of the neocon Washington Post to identify Ukraine as “the biggest prize” and explaining how its targeting could undermine Putin’s political standing inside Russia. “Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents,” Gershman wrote. “Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.” At the time, Gershman’s NED was funding scores of political and media projects inside Ukraine.
  • The Russian Hand Besides the tactical significance of U.S. intelligence agencies arranging Assad’s tacit acceptance of U.S. airstrikes over Syrian territory, the reported arrangement is also significant because of the role of Russian intelligence serving as the intermediary. That suggests that despite the U.S.-Russian estrangement over the Ukraine crisis, the cooperation between President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin has not been extinguished; it has instead just gone further underground. Last year, this growing behind-the-scenes collaboration between Obama and Putin represented a potential tectonic geopolitical shift in the Middle East. In the short term, their teamwork produced agreements that averted a U.S. military strike against Syria last September (by getting Assad to surrender his chemical weapons arsenal) and struck a tentative deal with Iran to constrain but not eliminate its nuclear program.
  • Direct attacks on Israel would be a temptation to al-Nusra Front, which is competing for the allegiance of young jihadists with the Islamic State. While the Islamic State, known by the acronyms ISIS or ISIL, has captured the imaginations of many youthful extremists by declaring the creation of a “caliphate” with the goal of driving Western interests from the Middle East, al-Nusra could trump that appeal by actually going on the offensive against one of the jihadists’ principal targets, Israel. Yet, despite Israel’s apparent rethinking of its priorities, America’s neocons appear focused still on their long-held strategy of using violent “regime change” in the Middle East to eliminate governments that have been major supporters of Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestine’s Hamas, i.e. Syria and Iran. One reason why Obama may have opted for a secretive overture to the Assad regime, using intelligence channels with the Russians as the middlemen, is that otherwise the U.S. neocons and their “liberal interventionist” allies would have howled in protest.
  • By early 2014, American neocons and their “liberal interventionist” pals were conspiring “to midwife” a coup to overthrow Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych, according to a phrase used by U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt in an intercepted phone conversation with Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who was busy handpicking leaders to replace Yanukovych. A neocon holdover from George W. Bush’s administration, Nuland had been a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and is married to prominent neocon Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the Project for a New American Century which prepared the blueprint for the neocon strategy of “regime change” starting with the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
  • The U.S.-backed coup ousted Yanukovych on Feb. 22 and sparked a bloody civil war, leaving thousands dead, mostly ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. But the Gershman-Nuland strategy also drove a deep wedge between Obama and Putin, seeming to destroy the possibility that their peace-seeking collaboration would continue in the Middle East. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Neocons’ Ukraine-Syria-Iran Gambit.”] New Hope for ‘Regime Change’ The surprise success of Islamic State terrorists in striking deep inside Iraq during the summer revived neocon hopes that their “regime change” strategy in Syria might also be resurrected. By baiting Obama to react with military force not only in Iraq but across the border in Syria, neocons like Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham put the ouster of Assad back in play.
  • In a New York Times op-ed on Aug. 29, McCain and Graham used vague language about resolving the Syrian civil war, but clearly implied that Assad must go. They wrote that thwarting ISIS “requires an end to the [civil] conflict in Syria, and a political transition there, because the regime of President Bashar al-Assad will never be a reliable partner against ISIS; in fact, it has abetted the rise of ISIS, just as it facilitated the terrorism of ISIS’ predecessor, Al Qaeda in Iraq.” Though the McCain-Graham depiction of Assad’s relationship to ISIS and al-Qaeda was a distortion at best – in fact, Assad’s army has been the most effective force in pushing back against the Sunni terrorist groups that have come to dominate the Western-backed rebel movement – the op-ed’s underlying point is obvious: a necessary step in the U.S. military operation against ISIS must be “regime change” in Damascus.
  • That would get the neocons back on their original track of forcing “regime change” in countries seen as hostile to Israel. The first target was Iraq with Syria and Iran always meant to follow. The idea was to deprive Israel’s close-in enemies, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestine’s Hamas, of crucial support. But the neocon vision got knocked off track when Bush’s Iraq War derailed and the American people balked at extending the conflict to Syria and Iran. Still, the neocons retained their vision even after Bush and Cheney departed. They also remained influential by holding onto key positions inside Official Washington – at think tanks, within major news outlets and even inside the Obama administration. They also built a crucial alliance with “liberal interventionists” who had Obama’s ear. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Dangerous Neocon-R2P Alliance.”]
  • The neocons’ new hope arrived with the public outrage over ISIS’s atrocities. Yet, while pushing to get this new war going, the neocons have downplayed their “regime change” agenda, getting Obama to agree only to extend his anti-ISIS bombing campaign from Iraq into Syria. But it was hard to envision expanding the war into Syria without ousting Assad. Now, however, if the source’s account is correct regarding Assad’s quiet assent to U.S. airstrikes, Obama may have devised a way around the need to bomb Assad’s military, an maneuver that might again frustrate the neocons’ beloved goal of “regime change.”
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Sep 14
     
    Robert Parry lands another major scoop. But beware of government officials who leak government plans because they do not invariably speak the truth.  I am particularly wary of this report because Obama's planned arming and training of the "moderate Syrian opposition" was such a patent lie. The "moderate Syrian opposition" disappeared over two years ago as peaceful protesters were replaced by Saudi, Qatari, Turkish, and American-backed Salafist mercenaries took their place. Up until this article, there has been every appearance that the U.S. was about to become ISIL's Air Force in Syria. In other words, there has been a steady gushing of lies from the White House on fundamental issues of war and peace. In that light, I do not plan to accept this article as truth before I see much more confirmation that ISIL rather than the Assad government is the American target in Syria. We have a serial liar in the White House.
Gary Edwards

JW: Obama Admin Knew About Benghazi Before It Happened - 0 views

www.judicialwatch.org/...hazi-attack-10-days-in-advance

Benghazi Judicial-Watch

shared by Gary Edwards on 25 May 15 - No Cached
  • The State Department has yet to turn over any documents from the secret email accounts of Hillary Clinton and other top State Department officials. “These documents are jaw-dropping. No wonder we had to file more FOIA lawsuits and wait over two years for them.  If the American people had known the truth – that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other top administration officials knew that the Benghazi attack was an al-Qaeda terrorist attack from the get-go – and yet lied and covered this fact up – Mitt Romney might very well be president. And why would the Obama administration continue to support the Muslim Brotherhood even after it knew it was tied to the Benghazi terrorist attack and to al Qaeda? These documents also point to connection between the collapse in Libya and the ISIS war – and confirm that the U.S. knew remarkable details about the transfer of arms from Benghazi to Syrian jihadists,” stated Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch president.  “These documents show that the Benghazi cover-up has continued for years and is only unraveling through our independent lawsuits. The Benghazi scandal just got a whole lot worse for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.”
  • The DOD documents also contain the first official documentation that the Obama administration knew that weapons were being shipped from the Port of Benghazi to rebel troops in Syria. An October 2012 report confirms: Weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the Port of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The weapons shipped during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s, and 125 mm and 155mm howitzers missiles. During the immediate aftermath of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the ((Qaddafi)) regime in October 2011 and up until early September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The Syrian ports were chosen due to the small amount of cargo traffic transiting these two ports. The ships used to transport the weapons were medium-sized and able to hold 10 or less shipping containers of cargo. The DIA document further details: The weapons shipped from Syria during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s and 125mm and 155mm howitzers missiles.  The numbers for each weapon were estimated to be: 500 Sniper rifles, 100 RPG launchers with 300 total rounds, and approximately 400 howitzers missiles [200 ea – 125mm and 200ea – 155 mm.] The heavily redacted document does not disclose who was shipping the weapons.
  • Another DIA report, written in August 2012 (the same time period the U.S. was monitoring weapons flows from Libya to Syria), said that the opposition in Syria was driven by al Qaeda and other extremist Muslim groups: “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.” The growing sectarian direction of the war was predicted to have dire consequences for Iraq, which included the “grave danger” of the rise of ISIS: The deterioration of the situation has dire consequences on the Iraqi situation and are as follows: This creates the ideal atmosphere for AQI [al Qaeda Iraq] to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi, and will provide a renewed momentum under the presumption of unifying the jihad among Sunni Iraq and Syria, and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against what it considers one enemy, the dissenters. ISI could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory. Some of the “dire consequences” are blacked out but the DIA presciently warned one such consequence would be the “renewing facilitation of terrorist elements from all over the Arab world entering into Iraqi Arena.”
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  • From a separate lawsuit, the State Department produced a document created the morning after the Benghazi attack by Hillary Clinton’s offices, and the Operations Center in the Office of the Executive Secretariat that was sent widely through the agency, including to Joseph McManus (then-Hillary Clinton’s executive assistant).  At 6:00 am, a few hours after the attack, the top office of the State Department sent a “spot report” on the “Attack on U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi” that makes no mention of videos or demonstrations: Four COM personnel were killed and three were wounded in an attack by dozens of fighters on the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi beginning approximately 1550 Eastern Time….
  • Gary Edwards on 25 May 15
     
    "Administration knew three months before the November 2012 presidential election of ISIS plans to establish a caliphate in Iraq  Administration knew of arms being shipped from Benghazi to Syria (Washington, DC) - Judicial Watch announced today that it obtained more than 100 pages of previously classified "Secret" documents from the Department of Defense (DOD)and the Department of State revealing that DOD almost immediately reported that the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was committed by the al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood-linked "Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman" (BCOAR), and had been planned at least 10 days in advance. Rahman is known as the Blind Sheikh, and is serving life in prison for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist acts.  The new documents also provide the first official confirmation that shows the U.S. government was aware of arms shipments from Benghazi to Syria.  The documents also include an August 2012 analysis warning of the rise of ISIS and the predicted failure of the Obama policy of regime change in Syria. The documents were released in response to a court order in accordance with a May 15, 2014, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against both the DOD and State Department seeking communications between the two agencies and congressional leaders "on matters related to the activities of any agency or department of the U.S. government at the Special Mission Compound and/or classified annex in Benghazi." Spelling and punctuation is duplicated in this release without corrections. A Defense Department document from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), dated September 12, 2012, the day after the Benghazi attack, details that the attack on the compound had been carefully planned by the BOCAR terrorist group "to kill as many Americans as possible."  The document was sent to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then-Defense Secretary Leon P
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